Archive of Our Own ^beta

This is how you kill a dragon:

Disable the wings. Blind it. Lodge half your bullets and arrows in its throat to prevent fire. Keep away from the tail—that thing’ll kill you before you have time to realise what’s happening. When it can’t fly away, can’t see you, can’t breathe fire, take two madmen crazy enough to run at it and plunge a spear into its heart. It has to be done at the right angle, past the solid plated chest, through the soft flesh between the scales. Oh, and get out of there before the whole damn thing crashes on your head.

Arthur flattens himself to the ground, and peers over the edge of the hill to look at the cow grazing below. Well, grazing’s an exaggeration, really, it’s more attempting to siphon any bits of grass that aren’t burnt or dried beyond any nutritional value. It’s a very skinny cow.

They always smell it before they see it. Sulphur. It’s the smell that fills their lives. It permeates their skin and their hair, their clothes, even the water. They can never quite escape it; it sticks in their nose and won’t ever leave. It’s all-encompassing and almost overwhelming when one is close by. And that’s when they know they either have to load their shotgun or run for their lives.

Preferably both.

Arthur wraps his scarf over his mouth and nose and looks at his group. On his right, Mithian carefully dips an arrow into the pouch at her waist. It glitters and shines golden when she pulls it out. She kisses the metal shaft of it once—as she always does—and nocks it to her bow. She nods at Arthur, then turns to make sure the other shooters are ready.

On Arthur’s left, Percival slips his arms into the straps of his wide metal shield. His movements are calm and sure, like this is just another piece of clothing he’s putting on—an extra shirt, or a woolen pair of socks against the cold. He drops his large hands onto Arthur’s shoulder, squeezes a little, and nods.

Arthur listens for the clicks of guns and weapons being carefully loaded. He doesn’t have to check, really; everyone knows what they have to do. He just likes the sounds, the metallic clings, and the shuffling of bodies against the ground. They’re a well-oiled machine.

After smelling it, they hear it: a great, staccato-like whooshing of air, and the occasional piercing cry. As far as Arthur’s concerned, that’s what death sounds like—like it’s coming on the wind, ready to swallow them whole.

A few moments later the sun is blocked out by the great shape of its body as it fills the sky and spreads over the land. Even after all these years, Arthur still gags at the smell, still shivers at the sight. All his instincts tell him to run, but Arthur Pendragon doesn’t run—he fights.

Killing dragons isn’t that much more different than any other kind of hunting, really. There’s a lot of waiting involved, that’s for sure, and good marksmanship is rather an important skill to have to achieve success. The similarities kinda stop there though. Nobody has ever heard of a deer that’s three stories high or more, breathes fire and tries to eat you. But still, killing dragons is straightforward and simple enough.

In theory.

“Now!” Mithian says over the deafening sounds of the beast as it thrashes on the ground and tries to take flight. It swipes left and right with its tail, its claws digging small trenches into the ground.

Percival runs out first, quick on his feet. Arthur’s right behind him, long metal spear in his hand. Arthur’s used to the weight of it by now, can balance it perfectly within the palm of his hand, fingers tight around the shaft. It’s something to focus on while he runs blind behind Percival’s tall, large bulk.

Up close, the foul smell is almost overwhelming. Arthur has to spit on the ground, momentarily dizzy with nausea. Small flames still come out of the dragon’s mouth, and Percival blocks them easily, as they crouch behind his shield until it’s safe to go on.

Percival sidesteps quickly to the left and Arthur follows like he’s a shadow. A small golden shield forms around them, and absorbs a sharp gust of wind. Arthur only hears the sound of a wing snap in the air to their right. In moments like this one there isn’t time to count all the ways in which he avoids being killed. They’re countless. Because, come on, they fight dragons, for fucks sake. The whole thing is an annoying dance with Death where he never knows who’s going to make the wrong move, who’s going to step on the other’s toes first.

If he’s still alive now, it means he’s avoided dying so many times they should probably write songs about him. Hell, they should write songs about all of them. Dragonkillers. That’s the stuff of legends.

Percival takes them under the dragon’s head, in the great shadow of its body where its chest looms over them, scaly and solid except for a very specific point that they know exactly where to find.

Percival ducks and Arthur doesn’t follow this time. He raises the spear, takes a deep breath—only a moment, a quick second to decide where to aim—and then throws it.

The dragon’s cry is deafening. Sometimes, it’s almost heartbreaking. Mostly because some people still carry that little bit of wonder inside of them, that tiny spark of fantasy that made them dream at night about dragons and knights and glory. But this is what life is now: law of the jungle and all that.

Percival drops the shield and comes to help Arthur. Together they push and push until the spear is buried deep into the dragon’s heart. Gold spreads under its skin. It shines even through the thick black hide and the shimmering green scales, courses through its veins, until the dragon’s body is full of it. It’s a bit blinding as it glimmers under the bright afternoon sun.

The dragon shakes, gives a last weak cry, then topples on its side. It twitches a few more times, then expires its last foul-smelling breath, and lies still.

Here are two important facts about dragons: one, their meat is damn tasty and two, they can’t be killed without magic.

They send word back to Ealdor that the kill has been successful. Their people will send carvers and butchers to take care of the carcass. It’ll take hours to strip the scales and thick skin away.

From the top of the hill, Arthur looks back down into the valley at the giant mass of the dragon, heavy and lifeless. Iridescent scales shimmer in the sunshine, hues of blues and greens and black, gold still simmering underneath. It’s nothing but flesh now. They say dragons have names, that they can think like humans, feel like humans, but Arthur’s never let himself ponder too much about it. It’d be pointless anyway.

Percival walks up to him. “Well done, Arthur,” he says. Arthur turns away from the dead dragon and embraces Percival with an arm around his shoulders, feeling the muscles moving under his hand, the momentary brush of Percival’s breath on his skin.

“You too,” he says.

When Mithian and Gwaine join them, they look tired and harried, clothes dirty with soil and sweat, but they smile at Arthur with the sort of relief and happiness that comes with the momentary, bone-deep feeling of having control again—the knowledge that they’re not defeated.

“Nice work, Pendragon,” Gwaine says, punching him lightly on the shoulder. “For a moment there I thought we’d have to gather you in pieces all over the valley.”

Arthur snorts. “Charming. It had nothing to do with me, though. Percival did most of the work.”

Gwaine just smirks and gives Percival a wink, but Percival ignores him and shakes his head, looking pensive.

“I wouldn’t have seen the wing sweep in time; something slowed it down,” he says.

“T’was Freya’s shot. And her shield,” Mithian says, cleaning some of her arrows she’d picked up from the flesh of the dragon before putting them back in the small quiver at her hip. “She saw it coming and shot the vein at the base of it before any of us could.” She wipes her brow with the back of her wrist. “Damn near impossible shot, if you ask me.”

“Well, she’s a Magical. It helps.” Gwaine points down with his chin at Freya coming up the hill toward them.

“I hear I have you to thank for not being dead right now,” Arthur says to her as soon as she’s within earshot. She looks up at him, a bit surprised, and gives him a shy smile and a stiff shrug of her small shoulders.

“S’nothing,” she says to him as she reaches the top, and looks at them all in turn. She scratches at her arm absently and Arthur’s eyes are drawn—as they usually are—to the dark tattoo that covers the side of her bicep and part of her right shoulder—intricate lines criss-crossing each other in an odd pattern, forming indistinguishable shapes dark and stark against her white skin, the sharp rise of her bones.

“Sorry the shield couldn’t be stronger,” she says. “You were a bit too far.”

“I’m pretty sure you don’t have to apologise for saving our lives.” Arthur smiles at her.

“You wouldn’t know how to throw energy, would you?” Gwaine says.

“Sorry. Not that kind of power.”

“Shame.”

Freya just shrugs again and hitches her bag higher on her shoulder. The huge bulk of it looks like it’s about to crush her, but her stance is steady and she doesn’t even waver on her feet with the weight of it . “See you,” she says, casting her eyes down before leaving them and joining a small group of hunters already making their way back to Ealdor.

“What I wouldn’t give for a Magical with dragon-fighting abilities,” Gwaine says, picking at the dirt in his nails. “It’d make this slightly easier. We should ask Merlin again.”

“What?” Arthur says, strapping his shotgun to his back, making sure he isn’t forgetting anything.

“Merlin. We should ask him. If anything he creates nice strong shields.”

Arthur shakes his head. “Not on hunts. He can’t be close to dying dragons. Besides, he’s an abysmal shot.”

“Yeah, I know but—”

“You can always ask him,” Arthur says as they start walking back to Ealdor. “He’s done it before.”

“He does plenty already,” Mithian says, dipping her finger into her pouch and letting the thick shimmering goo drip from her finger like honey, sparkling as it catches rays of sunshine, the magic in it untouchable and unfelt by any of them.

“Wonder what other powers she might have, though?”

Arthur shrugs.

“About three weeks ago,” Mithian says. “Maybe... two or three days after she arrived? It was the middle of the night and I heard strange noises coming from her room so I went to see...” She bites her lips.

“What?”

“It was weird. She was thrashing in her sleep, all sweaty, like she was having a nightmare, you know? Gwen was there, but even between the two of us we couldn’t wake her up. Her—Her eyes were wide-open though, and they kept changing between brown and gold, like she was doing magic, but... nothing was happening. T’was fucking weird.”

They stay silent for a while. It’s a bright, cloudless day; the air’s cool but the sun beats down on them, making Arthur sweat under his jacket. Normally, he’d be more nervous about walking like they are, with very little cover, and in such large numbers. But it’s fall, and there are less dragons in their sky, now that they’ve started to move south for the incoming winter. It’s worth the risk to take for a few months worth of food.

“Few days ago I heard some Magicals talking,” Gwaine says. “Took me awhile to understand they were talking about her—”

“What did they say?” Mithian asks.

“Not sure. They seemed to think that maybe she asked for it, you know? The tattoo,” he says when they look at him questioningly. “They Unsealed her and she asked for the tattoo.”

“How is that strange?” Percival says. “Plenty of people get tattoos.”

“Dunno.” Gwaine shrugs.

Arthur clears his throat. “Doesn’t seem like she’s dangerous at all to me,” he says. “Besides, she did just save my life. Percival’s too. She can make decent shields and she’s a good shot. I don’t really need to know more.”

“She’s nice,” Mithian says. “Just, you know...”

“Who isn’t?” Percival says.

“Exactly. Everyone’s allowed their secrets. Everyone has something they don’t want to talk about, and that’s their right to keep it that way. It’s not for us to ask.”

It’s been dark for a couple of hours when they make it back to Ealdor. Arthur keys the code on the bunker’s door, and they take the lift down to the second basement floor. It creaks and moans a little, and Arthur takes note to mention it to Merlin, so he can make sure everything’s in order.

He drags his fingers along the faded logo in one of the walls—a golden dragon on a red background. There’s something bitter and ashy at the back of his throat at the sight of it, and he tries to dislodge it with a small cough. Mithian slaps his hand away and tuts softly at him before rolling her eyes, and he gives her a small grin to reassure her, kicking lightly at her boot.

The elevator opens on the common area. They’re not the first to arrive, so there’s already a lot of people around, greeting and hugging each other. The overhead lights high in the ceiling, are off, and the room is bathed in soft gold and silver glow from several floating magical orbs.

“Guess the generator broke again,” Gwaine says as he slaps Arthur on the shoulder, leaving with Percival to greet Marian and Gareth, and little Jimmy who has a bit of a hero crush on Percival.

Mithian touches Arthur’s arm. “I’ll give the report.”

She goes to Gwen, who will handle the debriefing as usual, with a quick reassuring look over her shoulder, and Arthur has to smile at the way her high ponytail swishes from side to side as she does so, like a little girl’s. He’ll never tell her that, though, it would only end with her indignant squawk and a bruise on his shoulder from her sharp knuckles.

He’s always been grateful for Mithian and how she always gets Arthur without him really having to explain anything. Few people can do that. Merlin’s like that, though Arthur doesn’t really know how or why since he’s known Mithian for a long time, but Merlin... Merlin he can’t quite explain.

Morgana used to be the one that understood him the best. She was fucking infuriating most of the time, yes, but she still could read him like an open book, and she always knew what to say even when she wrapped it in insults and goading. Like always when unbidden thoughts of his sister cross his mind, something clenches hard and tight inside Arthur’s chest, and he has to turn his back on all the happy faces around him.

He slips to the side before anyone (Gwen) sees him and feels obligated to show him the same sort of worried care that always makes his skin itchy and uncomfortable, and he climbs the stairs on the east wall to the second floor of the common room lined with rooms and small flats—converted old offices—until he gets to his. He carefully avoids looking down at the activity below, and closes his door on the joyous sounds of reunion.

He rubs at his face for a moment before unbuckling his shotgun and vest, carefully leaning the first against the wall by the door, and carelessly throwing the other on his desk. He dresses down to his trousers and undershirt, and sits on his bed, his head in his hands, and takes deep, slow breaths as weariness settles in his bones. He can’t help the contented sigh that escapes him when he lies down, achy, heavy muscles slowly loosening into the mattress.

He waits for the knock that’s bound to come eventually.

When it does come, he’s almost asleep, and can only let out a grunt as an affirmative.

Merlin opens the door slightly. “Arthur? You sleeping?”

“No.” Arthur turns on his side towards the door.

With a smile, Merlin comes into the room and closes the door behind him. He switches the light on and Arthur blinks several times in the bright fluorescent light, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“Dammit, Merlin. A little warning before you decide to blind me wouldn’t kill you.”

Merlin just leans against Arthur’s desk, his long legs stretched in front of him, crossed at the ankles, and Arthur glares at him but Merlin only rolls his eyes. He’s wearing those heavy cargo pants with dozens of pockets he seems to like so much—always too big for him, hanging low on his narrow hips—and a white shirt. He has grease stains on his hands and one on his cheek.

Merlin sees him stare and he rubs at his face. “Sorry. We had a little problem—”

“I saw.”

“But it’s all fixed now! Hunt went well I assume?”

Arthur nods. “Yeah. We got ourselves a huge one too. Class C, I’d say. Or a large D.”

Merlin whistles between his teeth. “We’ll have food for a while then.”

“Should have enough for a few months at least, if we’re not too generous with it.”

The silence that falls between them is heavy, almost palpable, the familiar thickness of it always making Arthur squirm. Arthur’s leg twitches up and down nervously and he looks at his hands in his lap instead of Merlin. They both know why Merlin’s here, but Arthur won’t be the one to ask. He can’t ask.

“It should be you downstairs, you know?” Merlin says after a while. “You’re the one who came up with the plan.”

Arthur groans. “Don’t start again, Merlin. I don’t want to be there. They don’t want me there, and I get that. It’s okay.”

“Some of them do. In fact most of them do. They wouldn’t let you organise and lead these hunts if they didn’t. Only—”

“It’s not only Magicals, Merlin. It’s Magicals and some of their families as well.”

“A lot of them like you and look up to you, though. You don’t hear them ‘cause you’re never there, but they talk about you. Just the other day Louisa was commenting on the fact that there wasn’t a lot of meat left in the kitchens, and Mr. Clemens said that if there was anyone who could keep the supplies high, it was you.”

“He only says that because he hates eating vegetables, the old bastard.”

“You’ve proven you’re worth it. It’s your strategies and your knowledge that allows us to eat more than we did before you arrived, and to keep some of the dragons away. They can’t deny that.”

“Strategies and knowledge that both Mithian and Percy have as well. It’s not something special, Merlin. A lot of the people here are still very wary of me, and it’s understandable. They’re Magicals and I’m a Pendragon. I don’t want them to think I want to control them, or impose myself, and you know that. God, I feel like we’ve had this discussion hundreds of times already. They might tolerate me, even respect me a little, but that doesn’t mean they don’t hate me too. Hell, I’d hate me.” He clears his throat. “Besides, Gwen is far better at dealing with it all than I am. She cares and she knows how to talk to them. I’m a soldier. She’ll do her thing, I’ll do my own, and you’ll do yours. To each his or her place. Easy.”

“That’s such bullshit and you know it.”

“Can we not fight about this now?” Arthur says. “I’m bloody tired, Merlin. For fuck’s sake, I just drove a spear into a giant winged killing beast that breathes fire. You could spare me the nagging.”

Merlin scoffs but says nothing. He sits beside Arthur on the bed and gently lays a hand on his leg to stop the twitching, making a shiver go up Arthur’s spine.

“Wanna fuck?” Merlin says with a small grin.

“Wow Merlin, could you be blunter? This beating around the bush makes it really hard to know what you want.”

“It’s not like I have to woo you or anything, you arsehole.” His hand rubs slowly up and down Arthur’s thigh. “I know how you are after a hunt, and I... I want it, yeah?”

“You don’t have to, you know that, right?” Arthur says, but he leans against Merlin’s side, hand sliding under his shirt to rest on his lower back.

“I know that. Don’t be a dick. Now I’m the one who feels like we’ve had this discussion way too many times. You’re not about to soil my virtue. It’s not like I’m some innocent virgin or anything.”

Arthur laughs softly in the crook of Merlin’s neck, shoulders loosening a little. “Now, that I believe.”

Merlin touches his cheek gently. “I want to,” he says, and his head falls back with a soft moan when Arthur bites playfully into the junction between his neck and shoulder, exposing his long neck to Arthur’s lips. Arthur drags them lightly over his skin, following the muscle there with his tongue.

“Yes,” Merlin whispers, and Arthur smiles a little.

There’s a familiar unease at the back of Arthur’s mind, a nagging thought that burns low and constant, but he chooses to ignore it over the brighter burning under his skin. His body needs to do something: something that isn’t fighting, isn’t killing. Something that isn’t about surviving. If he said that out loud, Merlin would probably smile and say that this too is about surviving in a way, this touching and give and take they do, but Arthur doesn’t say anything. Merlin doesn’t need more reasons to think that Arthur doesn’t just want this, but that he needs it too. He doesn’t even really want to think about it, himself, so he lies back, and pulls Merlin until he’s stretched along Arthur’s body, hard and heavy with his annoyingly sharp hips poking Arthur in a way that makes him shift and scowl. Merlin only laughs against his lips.

It isn’t like Before. Arthur wouldn’t be doing this with Merlin if it was Before. He’s not sure if he should be doing it now, either, but Merlin drags his nails over Arthur’s stomach, then presses against his hard cock through his trousers with the heel of his hand, and Arthur stops thinking altogether.

Arthur watches while Merlin puts his trousers back on then sits on the bed and wraps his fingers around Arthur’s ankle over the covers, rubbing the bone there with his thumb.

“Better?”

Arthur rolls his eyes and turns onto his back. “Don’t look so smug Merlin. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Why not?” Merlin stretches his arms over his head. His shoulders pop and the muscles in his back move in a way that makes Arthur want to drag him down again for round two. “I can fix you with my cock. I’d say that’s something to be proud of.”

Arthur snorts, and Merlin looks back at him, grinning. He still has that stupid little grease stain on his cheek. Of course, the moment doesn’t last, and the heaviness that Arthur always feels, that nagging feeling that he ignored while Merlin’s skin was under his, around him, settles back on him like a shroud. Merlin must see it, because it’s his turn to roll his eyes at Arthur, sighing.

“Your self-hatred’s not cute, you know? It’s also entirely unjustified.”

Arthur reaches out a hand and traces the golden-black mark on Merlin’s left arm. There used to be three full Seals there—now only one remains; the other two are only rings of rosy flesh in his arm, like healed burns. There shouldn’t be any left at all. In fact, there shouldn’t have been any there in the first place. It’s ridiculous to feel guilty about something he can’t—could never have—controlled, but he still can’t help the way his stomach twists at the sight. Seals were a thing done way before he was even born, but he still feels responsible.

Merlin bats his hand away, exasperated. “You’ll never stop feeling guilty about that, will you?”

Arthur drops his hand and says nothing. There’s a tingle in his fingertips like he could touch the magic under Merlin’s Seal, all trapped and begging to be let out, though it’s clearly just in his head. He wouldn’t be able to feel the magic, even if it could come out of a Seal. He clenches his fist and looks at the ceiling, avoiding Merlin’s eyes. He feels strangely vulnerable now, naked with only the sheets around his waist, and with Merlin’s gaze on him.

He hates feeling like this. In fact, it’s fucking infuriating and Arthur holds onto that bit of annoyance, lets it grow and flare in his veins.

He raises himself on his elbows and sneers at Merlin. “What do you care, Merlin?”

“What do I—”

“Stop acting like you know everything all the goddamn time. You don’t, okay?”

“Arthur, I just want—”

“Shut up, Merlin.”

It’s not his wittiest moment, and he’s being a bit too transparent but he just needs Merlin to stop talking right now, because there are things Arthur doesn’t know how to explain, things that should stay inside of him. They protect him, and they give him purpose, but Merlin always has to fucking prod at them like he wants to pull them out of Arthur’s chest and dissect them until he understands them, until Arthur’s exposed and opened for the whole world to see. It’s suffocating.

Merlin glares at him, his lips tight, and Arthur’s exhales silently, relaxes a little.

With sharp movements that mean he’s annoyed with Arthur, Merlin pulls his shirt back on, and that’s much better. Much, much better. When Merlin’s eyes go soft looking at him with so much goddamn faith, like Arthur’s more than he deserves to be, Arthur has to grind his teeth and look away from the intensity of it because it burns, and it’s raw, and he hates it.

“Dinner’ll be served soon. You coming?” Merlin says while pulling his boots back on. His tone is short and he bites the inside of his cheek like he’s trying to prevent himself from saying something. Arthur has the strange impulse to push and push at him until Merlin does say what’s on his mind, even though it’s bound to annoy Arthur even more, but as soon as the desire comes over him it’s gone, and Arthur deflates, tired.

He throws an arm over his eyes. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ll just get cleaned up real quick.”

“I’ll grab a serving for you.”

“Thanks.”

The weight of Merlin’s body on the bed disappears, but Arthur doesn’t move his arm until he hears the definite click of his door closing. He takes comfort in the quiet for a minute or two before dragging himself out of bed. He gets dressed and grabs his shower supplies before walking down the hallway. The common area is still full of noise and laughter, and Arthur can hear Gwen talking a bit over it, giving news and answering questions. When he looks below, leaning slightly on the railing, he sees her with a toddler on her knees, her curly brown hair messy and tied up on her head. She laughs as the baby tries to grab at some strands falling over her face while she talks with Mithian and Hunith.

He walks to the small lift and goes to the third basement where the communal showers are. He’s the only one there, and he’s a bit grateful for that. The quiet and the hot water both soothe him. He leans with one hand on the wall, letting the water hit his shoulders and drift down his back. He feels a loose tile under his hand, one of those with the golden dragon on a red background, and he picks at it until it comes off.

He rubs at it a bit with his thumb, blinking against the water in his eyes, before closing his fist around it, letting the corners dig into his palm.

Merlin’s sitting with Gaius and Percival in the mess hall when Arthur makes his way to them, dropping in the seat in front of Merlin. Merlin pushes a tray of food towards him with a smile that Arthur takes as a peace offering. Arthur smiles back, kicks him lightly under the table, then switches his attention to Gaius and his questions about the hunt.

He finds Hunith picking vegetables in the gardens behind the bunkers.

“How’s the harvest?” he asks.

There’s a spark in her eyes, a happiness that seizes at Arthur’s heart. “Good,” she says. “Really good. I know we have hydroponics crops inside, but there’s just something...” She pauses, like she’s trying to find the right words. “There’s something about doing it this way too. Something familiar, comforting, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“You did good the other day, Arthur,” she says. “Merlin tells me you haven’t been out much though.”

“Merlin should learn to mind his own business,” Arthur snaps before he can stop himself. “I’m sorry I didn’t—”

Hunith laughs. “Don’t be sorry. You think I had better luck while he was growing up? I know how stubborn my son can be, believe me.”

“It must have been frustrating at times,” Arthur says, trying to put things delicately.

Hunith gives him a look that says ‘You think?’ and Arthur laughs. There’s something in the way she smiles back, a sort of fierce approval that makes Arthur want to know more, to unravel this mother-son mystery that he can’t wrap his head around. He very rarely regrets not having known his mother, but it’s in moments like these that he misses her, or the idea of her anyway.

If he had met Merlin when they were young—if Arthur hadn’t been Arthur, and Merlin hadn’t been Merlin—they might have been friends. He has a brief moment of imagining what it’d be like ringing the doorbell at Merlin’s house, coming in and playing in the garden with him while Hunith makes them sandwiches. Things would’ve been so much easier if everything had been completely different.

“Merlin’s a stubborn boy, Arthur,” she says. “When he thinks something’s worthwhile, he won’t ever let it go.”

Hunith pats his arm lightly, and he stands there for a while, staring at the rich brown soil being overturned as she goes back to work. The sun burns on the back of his neck, making sweat trickle along his spine. He takes a moment to just breathe—just take in Hunith’s slow and sure movements, the gardens full of ripened vegetables.

“How about a little game of poker,” he says impulsively to Hunith, who turns to him with her eyebrows raised. “It’s been a while since we’ve had one, after all.”

“Why not?” Hunith says. “It has been a while and I still need to collect my last winnings from Gwaine.

“Great! My rooms, I guess, same time as usual.”

Leaving Hunith to finish her work he goes back around the bunker and drops beside Mithian, who’s sleeping in the grass, Freya beside her. He nudges her awake with a small kick to her leg. She startles, tightening her grip on her bow, and Arthur stops her movement by grabbing her wrist, which earns him one of her death glares that never really fails to make him smile.

“Arsehole,” she says, sitting up and rubbing her face while he picks a few leaves stuck in her hair until she bats his hand away.

Their squabbling wakes Freya up with what Arthur swears is a growl, and wide startled eyes, but when she sees Arthur and Mithian looking at her, she just groans and lies back down in the grass.

Mithian narrows her eyes at him. “You look... chipper,” she says, looking like it’s the most suspicious thing in the world.

“I’m not chipper.” She raises an eyebrow. “Maybe sort of content.”

“Did I wake up in the Twilight zone or something?”

“Oh shut it. There’s a poker game tonight. My rooms. Can you come?”

“A poker game?”

“Yes.”

“And it was your idea?”

“Well... yes, I guess it was. I was just talking to Hunith and it seemed like a good idea. It’s been a while.”

Mithian looks at him with wide eyes for a moment, then drops back down into the grass. “Freya,” she says. “I’m afraid I have some bad news. We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.”

Arthur hears Freya’s muffled giggle where her head’s buried into her arms, which makes Mithian laugh, then nudge Arthur with her knee when he scowls at her. Really, he’s making an effort here, there’s no need to make a big fucking deal out of it.

Mithian sticks out her tongue at him because she’s obviously five years old. “I have the clean-up shift in the kitchens,” she says, “But after that I’m free. Freya? Know how to play poker?”

“What are we betting?”

“Moonshine and chores.”

“High stakes.”

“We take our poker very seriously. You in?”

“Yeah.” Freya raises her head to look at Arthur. “If that’s okay with you.”

“Of course.” She gives him a bright smile that illuminates her whole face. “I’ll see you both tonight then.”

“Prepare to have your arse kicked, Pendragon,” Mithian says, waving a hand at him with her other arm thrown over her eyes as he stands to leave.

“In your dreams, Nemeth.”

Their laughter follows him until he’s back in the bunker.

It’s not a rarity to regret inviting Gwaine to these games; he’s not only excellent at poker, and surprisingly adept at telling when one of them is bluffing, but he’s an arse about it too.

Arthur really wasn’t expecting to regret inviting Freya, though.

She’s wiping the floor with all of them. And she’s being so good and almost apologetic about it that they can’t even be angry or annoyed with her, especially as she smiles shyly over every single compliment (or well-meaning insult) thrown at her.

“That’s it. I’m done,” Gwaine says throwing his hands in the air as he loses the last of his cigarettes to her, and she takes them, pinching her lips together, before slowly sliding them over to Mithian. It doesn’t really matter because she already won Percival’s and Hunith’s shares. Elyan has to do her cleaning shift for the rest of the week, Arthur has to do it the week after that, and Gwen has to take Freya’s turn at inventory tomorrow. Not to mention the copious amount of moonshine she won, which she very graciously shared with everyone.

They’re all pretty pissed, actually. At least Arthur is. Hunith and Gaius left a while ago. Gwen’s falling asleep on Elyan’s shoulder, the both of them sitting on Arthur’s bed against the wall.

Merlin’s the only one who hasn’t lost much, but that’s only because he hasn’t been betting. That didn’t keep him from digging deep into whatever drink was put in front of him, though.

Arthur laughs at Gwaine’s dejected and confused face from where he’s sitting on the floor with his back to his bed. Percival pushes Gwaine and tells him to stop crying like a baby. Mithian, sitting crossed legged on the floor beside them and Freya, just laughs and points because she’ll take any opportunity to mock Gwaine, and he has too much of a crush on her to retaliate. In fact, he probably likes it, the freak.

Arthur’s all warm and fuzzy from the alcohol, and he looks at them, all of them, laughing, falling asleep against his furniture, grumbling, but all so very happy. It’s a little overwhelming, the way he feels at this precise moment. He’s not quite sure what it means, but if he could stop time right now, he would.

He turns to Merlin where he’s sitting on Arthur’s chair, his feet propped on the desk, to ask him if Magicals can stop time, but he only slurs through it, loud and undignified, and Merlin just raises an eyebrow at him and laughs.

Gwaine tries to stand up and fails spectacularly, flailing and losing his balance, while no one offers to help him. He manages to do it eventually, but only by holding onto Percival’s shoulders and then his head.

“I think it’s time to get this one to bed,” Percival says, standing up after Gwaine and holding him up a little. Arthur’s not sure Percival’s not as drunk as Gwaine, but between the two of them he assumes they’ll make it alive to their respective rooms. Or at least, he hopes they’ll make it, but he’s not really in any state to help them either way.

“I think it’s time for everyone to catch some sleep,” Mithian says, trying to stand by holding herself against the wall. She gives Freya a little glare. “I have a morning shift in the kitchen, after all.”

“Jesus, I’m drunk,” Arthur says to no one in particular, but Mithian taps his cheek a couple of times, and gives him a lopsided grin.

“Good night Arthur,” Gwen mumbles from where she stands leaning on Elyan by the door. “T’was a great idea. Thank you for having us.”

Gwen, ever so polite, even when she’s drunk enough moonshine to knock out a horse.

Arthur’s down to only his trousers when he realises that Merlin’s still in the room. It takes a long time for his brain to completely catch up, but he lets himself fall on his bed to take off his socks.

Merlin’s playing with the little tile Arthur took from the shower the other day, turning it between his fingers.

“What are you—”

“Can I stay for the night?” Merlin’s voice is soft and husky, and it takes Arthur a moment to process the words. He’s staring at Merlin’s lips really hard, forcing his mind to replay their movement so he can catch what was said, but he gets lost in how soft they look.

“What—I mean—Fuck, Merlin. I’m way too tired and way too drunk to fuck you tonight... or get fucked... or, you know, anything.”

Merlin gives him a soft smile and shrugs. “I know. I just—Just to sleep, yeah?”

It’s a little confusing, or at least he thinks it should be, because they don’t really spend the night together like that. Ever. Not without fucking first and then accidently falling asleep on each other. Merlin’s skin looks soft and warm though, from where Arthur sits. He knows the whole expanse of it under Merlin’s shirt. He knows how his long legs wrap easily around Arthur, and the whole sleeping together thing seems very appealing right now.

He takes his trousers off, does his best to ignore Merlin’s eyes on him, and slips under the covers, leaving them opened on the side in a clear invitation.

Merlin gives him a quick but blinding smile and undresses. Arthur can barely keep his eyes open while he looks at him, his head heavy on the pillow, but he makes an effort to move his limbs to accommodate Merlin’s when he stretches beside Arthur.

There’s a bit of slow and sluggish shuffling until they’re so intertwined Arthur can’t figure out how they’re comfortable like this, but then it doesn’t really matter because his lips are on Merlin’s forehead, his nose filled with the scent of his hair.

“S’nice,” he says, tongue heavy. “Soft.”

He falls asleep to the sound of Merlin’s snort and the feeling of his fingers curling around Arthur’s hip.

Winters are both a blessing and a curse. While the cold drives most of the dragons away back to the south of the country, to the Cities and the lakes, it also means the arrival of the wyverns. Wyverns are smaller than dragons—which is a blessing—but quicker, and more numerous—which is not. They’re dumb though. Really, really dumb. And there’s absolutely no chance of any of them starting to talk to you, yell names at you, curse your existence, or—in a very sad instance that Arthur prefers not to think about—beg for mercy.

Fortunately, they have amassed enough food and supplies to last all winter inside without ever having to go out, if they’re very careful about it. They’ll venture outside once in a while for a bit of fresh air, but otherwise they can all stay cozy and safe inside until the spring, when the wyverns will retreat to the northern countries and the dragons will fly back from the south..

The mess hall is almost empty. There are a few groups eating in the far corner, but Arthur quickly spots Freya at a table by herself.

“May I?” he asks, pointing to the chair in front of her.

She gives him a small smile, chews on her food and nods, so Arthur sits down and enjoys the companionable silence between them while they eat.

“Do you like it here?” he says.

Freya takes a look around at the metal walls, the tables and mismatched chairs. Her gaze lingers on the western side where some of the children have pasted drawings of windows full of grassy hills and rainbows.

“Yes,” she says, then looks back at him. “It’s good. I mean, you have teachers, and healers and Magicals. Soldiers, obviously. But… it’s like a community too. That’s harder to find now than people think. It’s—It’s safe.”

“Were you in the Cities? Before coming here?”

Freya just shrugs a little, and picks at her food. “Here and there. It was okay for awhile, you know? Well, as okay as it could be under the circumstances, that is.”

“Yeah.” He drags his hand through his hair. “I know what you mean.”

Freya’s been in Ealdor for several weeks now, but it’s the first time they find themselves alone like this. They’re usually busy doing things around Ealdor, or passing time with others, but there’s just so long one can spend cooped up inside, however big the inside is, before one’s forced into proximity with everybody else.

“How long did you stay in the Cities?” she asks.

“From the Invasion until about three years ago, so what... seven years?” He laughs dryly. “Has it been ten years already?”

“I know, right?” she says with a smile. “Feels like yesterday, and it feels like forever at the same time.”

“Why did you leave? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“For a couple of years after the Invasion I was...” She looks pensively at him, like she isn’t sure how to tell him, and he has an idea of what she’s going to say. It’s like a vice around his chest. “... Locked away, so to speak, kind of.”

He just nods, unable to look her in the eyes. The knowledge is like ashes in his mouth.

“It doesn’t bother you to be here, then?” he asks. “It must… be difficult.”

She shakes her head, looks around her some more. “It may have the same shape, but it’s not the same at all.”

Arthur curls his fists in his lap and stares at his plate. He’d do anything to make it different. To make it so Freya, and others like her, were never forced to live in places like Ealdor before the Invasion.

“Then,” she says, “I was Unsealed.” She points to her left arm where two rings used to be burned into her skin. “I worked for the Coalition for a while. Killing dragons and all that. That’s where I learned how to shoot.”

Arthur breathes a sigh of relief; this he can talk about. “I was in the Coalition too. Out of Camelot. You?”

“Escetir.”

He startles. Back when the Coalition still existed, the Escetirians were known for being brutal and ruthless, to dragons and humans. While they had military training, their combat style was much more about running head first into things and asking questions later. There had been reports of raids and violence done by them that had nothing to do with hunting dragons and everything to do with territorial wars and general conquering. It was said they had espoused a warrior-like way of living, twisting and glorifying old cultures like the Vikings or the Spartans. Freya, with her small body, her bird-like bones, and soft-spoken nature hardly seems like she would belong with them, however a good shot she may be.

She laughs quietly. “Don’t look the type, do I?”

“Not really, no.”

She gives him a steady look for a moment, and her fingers trace her tattoo like a caress. From the corner of his eye, it’s like the dark lines move and shiver across her skin, and Arthur tries really hard not to stare. He bites down on a question; people respect each other’s secrets here. Except Merlin.

“Believe me,” Freya says. “In those times, I fit right in.”

He’s really curious, he won’t lie. But she doesn’t seem to want to offer more, so he bites the inside of his cheek and says nothing, then clears his throat.

“Well, whatever it is, I’m glad you were there on the last hunt. Thanks again for saving my life.”

“Maybe one day you’ll be able to return the favor. S’not an easy world.”

People start coming in for lunch. Arthur can see Merlin and Percy in line to get their food, Gwaine not far behind.

“You’re really safe here, you know?” Arthur says. There’s an urge, a need, to make her understand. “The people here... they’re the best I’ve ever met. This can be your home. You can find a family here.” They both look at Merlin still at the front of the hall and wave back at her when she sees them. Arthur reaches out and touches Freya’s wrist lightly to get her attention. “You’re safe,” he says again, willing her to understand.

She smiles then, bright and wide, like he’s never seen her do before. “This isn’t a Pendragon world anymore. Perhaps it’s time to let go of the fact that it ever was,” she says with a keen look just as Merlin sits down beside her.

Arthur narrows her eyes at her. “You’ve been spending too much time with Mithian,” he says, making Freya laugh.

Merlin looks between them, confused. “You okay?” he asks Arthur, but Arthur only grins at Freya. “What? What’s so funny.”

“Nothing,” Arthur says. “Eat your food Merlin.”

Merlin makes a face at him, and kicks him under the table. To which Arthur has no other choice, but to retaliate. Of course. And if he does it a little harder than necessary just to see Merlin gawk at him indignantly, well, no one needs to know.

Percy and Gwaine join them and the conversation shifts to the extreme Monopoly tournament they have going on, which is the main pastime of the population of Ealdor in the winter months.

They all take it very seriously.

Arthur rubs at his face as he leans back in his chair, and he looks at the people around him. at the children drawing and the people playing board games. A movie plays on the telly in the corner, and it’s the twelfth time they’ve played Love Actually in the past two months, but no one really cares.

“I’d kill for chocolate right now,” Merlin says as he leans and hits the table with his forehead. “How can I remember the taste even though I haven’t had any in about seven years?”

“It’s cruel, I know,” Gwaine says. “I’d give away my right arm for some decent beer right now. None of that brew we make downstairs.”

Arthur snorts. “You love that brew. Don’t lie.”

“I’d love a good Guinness even more.” He grins.

They both look at Arthur, expectantly. That’s the unsaid rule of the game. If one craves or misses something from Before, everyone must also say what they miss or crave so they can all feel miserable together. It’s fucking nonsense, but whatever.

“Indian take-away,” he says after a moment.

“Oh yes,” Merlin says, closing his eyes with a wistful look on his face.

“Pineapples,” Freya says.

Everyone looks at Percival. “Cookie dough ice cream.”

They all groan at the thought, and then quickly change the subject to other mundane things and gossip. Arthur lets himself feel the moment—the looks and the smiles on his friends’ faces, the teasing and the jokes, and when Merlin turns to him and punches him on the shoulder calling him a fucking arsehole with a wide grin, he can’t help but laugh.

Merlin slides his foot along Arthur’s calf under the table and smirks at him when Arthur glares.

Fucking little tease.

It’s spring and the wyverns have gone again. Arthur expects some dragons to show up eventually. They’ll need to go hunting soon. A bit of meat will do all of them some good after being inside for four months with only the rare excursion outside. Today’s one of the first days where they can chance a walk out to take some deep breaths of non-recycled air, though, and he decides that there’ll be time to plan and worry later.

Unfortunately, it’s also fucking raining.

They’re just slowly walking by the edge of the woods, him, Merlin, Mithian, and Freya, all wrapped in their coats because it’s still pretty chilly and the wind coming from the mountains right to their north still carries a winter bite.

Mithian’s rolling some cigarettes as Merlin keeps the four of them dry with a shield over their heads. Gaius took to trying to grow a bit of tobacco a few years back, and every year since they’ve arrived Mithian takes it upon herself to smoke her way through all the shares she can get. Arthur usually lets her have his, but Freya won it (again) at a poker game they had a couple weeks back. It doesn’t really matter though; he’s not much of a smoker himself, and he’s pretty sure that Freya gave them to Mithian anyway. Mithian once confessed that she was the typical art student that smoked too much especially when she had to deal with end of semester stress. That’s the thing she holds onto that reminds her the most of Before, the thing that convinces her that she hasn’t totally lost herself in the world they have now—that there’s still a little bit of Before-Mithian inside of her. It’s a bit strange to Arthur, even if he can sort of understand it. He’d never want to have anything to do with Before-Arthur, yet no matter how hard he tries, he can’t quite escape him.

Mithian finishes rolling a couple cigarettes before lighting the first one and exhaling with a deep contented moan that sounds way too filthy and makes Merlin laugh. Mithian waggles her eyebrows at him before handing him the cigarette like it’s a joint. Fuck but Arthur could use one right now, if he’s honest. He doesn’t know where that comes from really. He hasn’t smoked weed since before the Invasion.

It’s weird though. Sometimes it feels like it was forever ago that the world they knew was torn apart, and then once in awhile they’ll have this sudden craving out of nowhere for something they haven’t had in years, and there’ll be the phantom taste of maltesers on their tongues when they could have sworn that they actually didn’t remember what it tasted like in the first place.

When the cigarette gets to him he takes a deep drop on it, rolling the smoke around his tongue, relishing the taste and how the acrid smell of the smoke mixes with the wet smell of the rain, of thawing, and of sulphur.

He takes a moment to enjoy the buzz of it filling his lungs and veins, then passes the cigarette to Freya beside him with a smile. When she smiles back, Arthur’s struck by how young she looks, unguarded and content. She takes a long drag, tilts her head, and blows perfect smoke rings over her head. Arthur watches them go with a surprised laugh, until they get past Merlin’s shield and are destroyed by the rain. Freya grins and leans forward to hand the cigarette back to Mithian.

“Nice.”

“I have many skills,” Freya says with a small smirk.

“Clearly.”

Merlin chuckles quietly, and Arthur turns to look at him. He’s walking slowly, hands in his jacket pockets, head thrown back to look at the sky. His whole body is loose and relaxed even though he’s moving, and it’s like when they’ve just fucked and Merlin’s catching his breath, and every muscle, every line of his body, screams contentment. Merlin’s hair’s a mess and there’s a faint stubble across his jaw that makes Arthur want to drag his tongue across it just to see the shiver that’d elicit.

Arthur forces his gaze away to see Mithian looking at him with a raised eyebrow, and Arthur just rolls his eyes at her, and then she rolls her eyes back, mocking, before turning her attention to Freya.

There’s a sudden ache in Arthur’s chest at the simplicity of the moment, at how casual and free and normal it is. Like they could still be ten years younger or more, just hanging out after school, smoking cigarettes and weed and flirting together, or hooking up like there’s nothing more important in the world but them and this moment. Like they haven’t seen the world end and haven’t all gone to war over it. It’s so nice and so fucking painful at the same time, it takes his breath away.

He’s about to reach for Mithian’s second cigarette when a sharp, high cry pierces the air, startling him.

In one quick moment he’s grabbed the shotgun strapped to his back. He looks at the sky, tries to find the dragon through the rain.

Mithian’s beside him in a heartbeat, her own guns aimed high and he doesn’t have to look back to know that Freya’s doing the same behind him.

“Sounds like a small one,” he says without looking away from the greyness of the sky. “We keep it at bay until we can make it back to the bunker.”

The bunker’s not far. Arthur can’t quite see it from where he is, but they’re only about ten minutes away.

When they get a slight look at the dragon, Arthur estimates it’s probably a Class E. Its greenish body shimmers slightly in the faint grey light, long tail dragging behind it, and the membrane on its wings is so translucent they can see its veins. The smell of it is faint, dampened by the rain, its movements a bit slow and sluggish.

They can totally take it.

Arthur hadn’t expected to see any dragon for a couple of weeks yet, but as he looks at it, it’s easy to see that its body’s more angular and sharp and emaciated than normal. It probably ventured north sooner than usual in search of food.

“Mith,” he says.

“I know.” Mithian’s stepping to the right to get a better angle at it and the four of them start backing up slowly. They can’t run without turning their backs on it, and it’d probably be a bad idea anyway, the rain having made the ground muddy, slippery, and treacherous.

Arthur considers their options. They can’t run from it, and they can’t really hide either. What they call ‘the woods’ is only a sparse stretch of land made of small trees, and burned-black, twisted old tree trunks. There’s no foliage they could use as cover, and even if there were, walking into it would mean walking away from the bunker. Their best bet is to keep the dragon away from them with their guns and magic. Neither Freya or Merlin have dragon-fighting magic, but they can both raise shields that’ll block the rain and possibly the dragon’s fire if it gets too close.

The dragon comes right at them. A few cold drops of rain fall on Arthur’s face and he starts a little. He aims at the dragon’s left wing as best he can with the visibility being what it is, which is to say, pretty fucking bad. Freya and Mithian do the same.

More rain gets into Arthur’s eyes and he takes a second to wipe at his brow.

“Merlin,” he yells. “Shield.”

He doesn’t take time to look back, just fires at the dragon, followed by Freya and Mithian, not even a second after him, their bullets trails of brilliant gold against the bleakness of the sky. The dragon screams and they are all promptly drenched in water.

“Merlin!”

The dragon screeches in pain and flies back a little. Arthur takes a second to look behind him, the cold rain plastering his hair to his forehead and his clothes to his skin.

Merlin’s curled in on himself on the ground, his arms over his head, mud all over him.

“Merlin, wha—”

Behind him Freya fires another bullet, and this time when the dragon screams in pain, Merlin does too. His face is twisted in agony, and when he looks at Arthur, his eyes are wide and confused, afraid like Arthur’s never seen him before.

Arthur reaches for Merlin, and Merlin latches to his arm with wet fingers and a harsh, strong grip.

“Arthur, stop. Please—make it stop. Make it—”

“Arthur!” Mithian yells, and Arthur reacts on instinct. He stands quickly and shoots back at the dragon. It’s so hungry and desperate that it’s still coming at them without much care for its own pain. Dragons are rather stubborn creatures, and they don’t tend to give up once they’ve set their eyes on prey, but they’re usually rather smart about it too. And patient. Winter wasn’t kind to this one.

Freya’s eyes glow gold and a shield rises above them.

“It’ll block the rain and the fire a bit, but not the dragon,” she says. “And I’m almost out of bullets.”

“Mithian?” Arthur says.

“I’m okay for now,” she says. “But we need to move.”

Arthur has no idea what’s going on, but the not-getting-killed-by-a-dragon gets precedence right now, even if there’s a part of him that just wants to hold Merlin because he’s clearly in pain. The desire tugs at Arthur with surprising force, and he really has to fight himself to not just drop to his knees and find a way to make Merlin better.

Fuck.

The goddamn dragon was supposed to back off to give them some space. It’s not the first time they’ve been surprised by dragons and it’s usually not impossible to keep the beasts at bay while they gather themselves. It should be easy even, in theory, with two Magicals with him. Even if Merlin doesn’t fight dragons, he’s been around them before, and while he’d been a bit loopy and green, Arthur has never seen him completely lose it.

He bends down to grab at Merlin’s shoulder, and when Merlin looks back at him, his gaze is unfocused and keeps shifting between blue and gold, like his magic is somehow short-circuiting.

“Can you walk? Merlin, you have to walk.”

But it’s like Merlin doesn’t really hear him. His fingers scrabble at Arthur’s arms and chest.

“Arthur, don’t kill it. Please, it—Please don’t—It hurts. Arth—”

Arthur puts his arm around him and hauls him to his feet. He takes a shot at the dragon over Merlin’s shoulder and tries to get them moving, but it’s difficult with Merlin so unsteady and slipping in the mud at every step.

“What’s wrong with him?” Mithian asks, backing up slowly to stand at Arthur’s right while Freya takes the same spot on his left. They start moving back once more. Slowly.

Merlin’s clinging to Arthur’s chest, his body lax and shivering, wracked on occasion with painful-looking convulsions.

The dragon’s not coming closer, like it’s taking a moment to study them, and Arthur vaguely hopes it’ll decide that they’re not worth it.

When it spits fire at them, Freya’s quick and drops her gun, raising both hands out to push her shield forward and stop the flames. She shakes her hands with a wince afterwards, the skin of her palms clearly red even from where Arthur’s standing.

“Shields are not my specialty,” she says, picking up her gun again and stepping back in line with Arthur and Mithian already a few meters behind her.

Arthur almost yells at her, even if it’s unfair. Not all Magicals have the same powers or skills and not all of them can fight dragons, but Freya said herself that she was in the Escetirian Coalition and they were known for being wild and ruthless. No matter how fucking good Freya’s aim is, Arthur could use a bit of magical wildness and ruthlessness right now.

As he’s raising his shotgun once again, Merlin moves suddenly and grabs the barrel, wrenching the gun out of Arthur’s hand before Arthur can react.

“Merlin!”

Merlin throws the shotgun into the trees, then promptly bends over, arms around his stomach, and vomits into the mud.

“What the hell!” Mithian says, shooting two more rounds at the dragon.

Merlin’s head snaps up to look at her, his face distorted with rage. Arthur just has the time to catch him around his waist before he launches himself at Mithian with a snarl. He almost automatically goes limp in Arthur’s arms, then pulls at his wet hair, and turns around to look at him with desperation.

“Don’t kill him, Arthur. Please don’t kill him.” His voice is raw and broken.

“Him?”

“He’s just a baby, and he’s scared and he’s hungry. He’s just so scared, Arthur, you can’t kill him.”

“Merlin, he’s going to kill us!”

“I’m out of bullets,” Freya says, dropping her guns and raising her shield.

“Almost out,” Mithian says.

Arthur’s shotgun lays in the mud somewhere where he can’t see it, and there’s no time to go look for it. He looks behind him and sees the bunker. They’re not far. They’ll have to make a run for it, but it looks bad. Really bad.

Freya seems to have arrived at the same conclusion because something resolute settles on her face, and she wrenches the zipper of her jacket down and takes it off.

Mithian fires one more bullet.

“Freya?” There’s cold focus in Freya’s eyes when she looks at them.

“I’m going to keep it busy,” she says. “You three run to the bunker and get some help. I can’t kill it.”

“What—”

Before Arthur can ask what’s she’s going to do, Freya raises her left hand to her shoulder, fingers splayed over her skin. When her eyes flash gold, the black lines of her tattoo move and start to disappear, like her hand is siphoning them out. Once they’re all gone, Freya gives him a quick grin.

“You might have to knock me out after this,” she says. “Please try not to kill me.”

She crouches on the ground and Arthur’s not sure what happens, but one minute Freya’s there and the next her body has shifted and contorted and a huge black cat with wings is standing in her place. It roars once, scratches the ground with its front paws, then lunges forward and into the air right at the dragon.

Arthur stares at it for a moment, because what the fuck just happened, he has no fucking clue, but then Merlin starts to thrash and scream and Arthur’s attention is diverted to him.

“Merlin! Merlin we have to go. Merlin!”

But Merlin’s both trying to cling to Arthur—begging him to not kill him, that it’s just a baby, just a baby, please don’t kill him—and trying to run towards the dragon and Freya, or... whatever she has become.

Arthur tries to pick him up, but Merlin’s out of control. Arthur refuses to leave him behind, too worried he’ll hurt himself or do something stupid.

“Mith!”

Mithian startles, still a bit in shock as she stares at the two beasts fighting in the air. The big flying cat—Freya, and damn if that’s not weird— seems to be trying to lead the dragon away, or to divert its attention from them to her. The air’s filled with their roars and cries.

“Right,” Mithian says, turning around and sprinting to the bunker.

Arthur drops to his knees, holding Merlin tighter to him. It’s like he’s in a trance or a feverish dream, and Arthur doesn’t know what to do. He really doesn’t know what to do. Merlin’s eyes keep flickering gold, but nothing’s happening.

Arthur grabs Merlin’s slippery, wet wrist and tries to force him to look at him, while at the same time he’s keeping an eye on the two battling beasts in the sky.

“Merlin, Mer—Look at me, Merlin.”

Merlin raises his head and stops thrashing as violently.

“Stop it,” Arthur says, finding the tone of voice he used to take when he was in the army, the one that made people listen to him. “You hear me? Stop. It.”

Merlin shakes his head, frowning, like he’s trying to get rid of the fog that’s clouding his mind. “Arthur, I can’t,” he says in a strained voice, then lets out a pained whimper. “It... hurts. I can hear him in my head. I can hear him and—The magic, it—”

Every muscle in Merlin’s tense, his whole body taut with restraint, and he shakes and drops his forehead to Arthur’s shoulder.

“What Merlin? The magic what?”

“It... wants something. It wants out, but I—I don’t—I can’t—”

Merlin’s losing it again, and Arthur grabs hard at his upper arms, digging his fingers into the wet fabric of his coat. It’s really difficult to see properly with the rain falling on them. It runs down Merlin’s face and clings to his hair.

Arthur’s about to punch Merlin to knock him out, maybe throw him over his shoulders and make it back to the bunker, when people run past them, a wet and muddy Mithian in their lead.

“Don’t shoot yet,” she yells over the sound of the rain and the screeching of the dragon and Freya. “The black one’s Freya!”

They don’t know what to do. They can’t shoot the dragon without risking shooting Freya, but it’s also clear that she’s getting tired, and not doing something soon could mean her getting injured under the dragon’s claws and teeth.

Mithian pumps her shotgun and fires one shot in the air. The sound gets Freya’s attention, and she turns her big yellow eyes toward them before roaring and flying back with a great push of her wings, leaving the dragon exposed.

They don’t lose a second.

Merlin screams and thrashes again, clawing at Arthur’s neck. He grabs Arthur coat’s collar, eyes wide and wild, his grip harsh and desperate.

“For fuck’s sake,” he says through clenched teeth. “Just knock me out already. Arth—”

Arthur doesn’t hesitate and punches him.

Merlin goes limp in his arms, and Arthur lowers him to the ground on his side so no rain gets in his nose.

“Gwaine!” he says.

Gwaine turns around, looks at Arthur, then Merlin, and nods. He gives Arthur the extra gun he has strapped on his back and comes to stand close to Merlin’s body while Arthur joins Mithian and Percival at the front.

Arthur missed when the dragon fell, but it’s now on the ground, feebly trying to get back into the air, its wings broken and incapacitated. Freya’s got her large front paws on its head, pushing it into the mud, keeping its jaws closed at the same time.

Percival drops his shield, and both he and Arthur approach the dragon cautiously. Arthur keeps his gun trained on the dragon’s head. And on Freya as well, just in case.

In the greyness of the air, the rain and the mud, the magic on Percival’s spear positively shines all gold and majestic, like it’s a mystical weapon out of a fantasy novel. There’s nothing majestic, though, about the muffled cry of pain the dragon lets out when they plunge it into its breast.

Gold spreads over its body, but all Arthur can look at is the large blue eye staring back at him, glazed over with pain. But there’s fear there too, maybe, and he can’t help hearing Merlin’s scared voice, begging him to not kill it, that it’s just a baby, that—

But then the eye closes, the dragon expires, and everything is still once more but for the fall of the rain.

Beside him, Freya growls. Arthur turns around quickly and points his gun at her. She paws at the ground and snarls, showing her long, bloody canines. Rain runs down her shiny black pelt, hitting the ground red and watery as she advances on him, limping and whining.

“Freya. Freya, it’s Arthur.”

He tries to make his voice soothing but firm as well, not sure if she can really recognise him. She shakes her head, looks at him for a moment, and crouches, making a deep rumble in her chest like she’s getting ready to pounce. Arthur takes a step back.

Mithian runs in front of him, weaponless, and extends her hand toward Freya. Arthur doesn’t say anything, but he’s still ready to shoot if Freya so much as makes a move to jump at Mithian. Aiming at a wing or a leg would probably just wound her, but really, he has no idea how her human body translates into this animal one.

“Freya,” Mithian says sternly. “Come back.”

Freya whines. Mithian takes another step.

“Freya!” she says again, and resolutely puts her hand on her head.

Freya roars, her eyes flash gold, and in a shivering moment, she’s human once more. She looks at them, unfocused as she trembles naked in the rain, her whole right side red with blood.

Mithian catches her as she falls, and Arthur drops his gun to put his jacket around her. Mithian looks at him over Freya’s bent head, confused and worried.

“We have to take her and Merlin to Gaius,” he says.

She nods, steadying Freya’s limp body against hers, but in the end it’s Percival who picks her up and shields her against his chest.

Arthur runs back to where Merlin is just as Gwaine’s hoisting his still-unconscious body over his shoulders. Arthur resists the urge to tell him he’ll do it, or to reach and squeeze Merlin’s dangling fingers.

Arthur looks back at the dragon’s corpse, still faintly glowing gold. It seems small and skeletal and so insignificant, in a way. It’s strange to think that because of it, somehow, the world has tilted once more.

“Were you in the infirmary?” Mithian asks him as she hands him a cigarette.

Arthur leans on the wall of the bunker with a sigh, passes a hand through his hair, and only hesitates for a second before taking the cigarette and lighting it. It’s still fucking raining. It’s been raining for days now, and the soil’s soggy and muddy, and he’s grateful that they’re a bit uphill. He doesn’t get how the ground isn’t saturated yet with all the water.

“Yeah.”

“How’s Freya?”

“She’s good. She’ll be able to leave the infirmary today.”

“Has she talked about the, you know...” Mithian makes claws with her hands and bares her teeth. “Grrr...”

Arthur shakes his head. “Not to me. I thought maybe she would’ve talked to you.”

“No, we’ve mostly played poker when I’ve visited her.” There’s a bit of bitterness in Mithian’s voice, and Arthur chuckles.

“Still getting your arse kicked, then?”

Mithian just takes a long drag on her cigarette and shoots him a glare.

“Gaius and Alice think she was cursed,” he says, after a moment.

Mithian turns to face him, looking confused. “But, how’s that even possible? I thought all Magicals were Sealed...”

Arthur winces. “That’s what everybody thought, but there were always some that were... rogue, so to speak. It was just… you know, a Pendragon Secret.” He can almost imagine his father would rise from his grave and yell at him for it, all cold disapproval and disappointed looks.

Mithian just raises an eyebrow and turns back to lean completely on the wall.

“How’s Merlin?”

Arthur has lost count of how often he’s grateful for Mithian, who knows exactly when to push and when to not say anything. Merlin should take note.

“He’s okay. Finally woke up.”

“Took him long enough. You really punched his lights out didn’t you?”

Arthur splutters. “What? That wasn’t me! It’s just… a magical exhaustion thing.”

Mithian laughs and punches him on the shoulder. “Relax love, no one thinks you’re abusing your boyfriend.”

Arthur takes back what he thought earlier; he’s not grateful at all for Mithian. She’s a pain in his arse.

“Merlin’s not—We’re not—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve said before. You could be though. You know that, right?”

Arthur sighs, throws his cigarette in a puddle and rubs at his face with fingers that smell like sulphur and smoke and mud. “It’s complicated.”

“Only because you’re being an idiot.”

“Mith, I—”

“No, it’s okay,” she says turning to him. “I know. I just wish... I wish you would just see, you know?”

Arthur just nods slowly even though he doesn’t really know what she means. There’s this burn inside his chest again that he smothers down before it spreads.

“So. Dragonlord, huh?” Mithian says.

“So it seems. He was talking with Gaius when I left.”

“People aren’t going to like it.”

Arthur shrugs. To be honest, he doesn’t give a flying fuck if people like it or not. It’s Merlin, and that’s all he needs to know.

“I’m going back,” he says. “See if there’s something I can do.”

“Before you go, I need to tell you something,” Mithian says, smoke curling around her lips.

Arthur leans back against the wall and gives her a wary look. “Uh oh. Do I really want to know?”

“Shush, you. Listen carefully, ‘cause I’m about to drop some wisdom on your arse.”

He snorts. “God, you’re bossy.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“I only let you do it, ‘cause I love you.”

“I know,” she says with an innocent smile, batting her eyelashes. “And I’m taking complete advantage of it. Now, listen.”

“Go ahead, Oh Master of Wisdom, I’m all ears.”

“Okay. So. You know people, right? They exist.”

“I’m already blown away by your vast knowledge.”

Mithian completely ignores him. “They’re individuals, with their own thoughts and dreams and opinions and all that. Agreed?”

“Yes,” he says with an exasperated breath.

“Okay. Here’s the thing, and hold on this might blow you away. Sometimes people will have completely different opinions or feelings on the same subject, or person. Amazing, I know. Try not to faint.”

“Mith, what—”

“You can’t force people to feel what you think they should feel, Arthur. You just have to accept it.”

Arthur takes a long, deep breath. He’s not an idiot. He gets what Mithian’s saying, but he can’t quite wrap his head around it, can’t quite accept it. It twists inside of him and makes his mouth taste bitter. It must show on his face because Mithian just smiles at him softly.

“It’s okay, Arthur,” she says in a kind voice, then grins. “Don’t think too hard, you might hurt yourself.”

Arthur throws mud at her.

When Arthur makes it to the communication room, Mithian, Gwen, Freya, and Percival are already there. They all look up at him as he closes the door. Gwen bites her lip and frowns, Percival shakes his head imperceptibly, but it’s Mithian’s look that gives Arthur a shiver of apprehension. It’s her cool, level gaze, calculating and resolute—the kind she got when their orders came in during the Coalition, just before heading into battle—that tells him things are about to get worse.

He nods at her, then turns his gaze to Elyan in the corner.

“What news?” Arthur asks.

Elyan fiddles with the wires of his radio, reconnects a few together, tightens a knob that makes the device send a slightly staticky sound into the room before looking up at Arthur.

“Some of the Lords are moving north. They’ve taken Nemhain.”

“Shit.” He passes a hand over his face. “Are they all right?”

Elyan nods. “They had to surrender of course. They’re now part of Lord What’s-his-name’s kingdom.”

“Sigan,” Gwen says.

Elyan shrugs. “Anyway. There wasn’t much loss, but you know how it goes.”

Arthur rubs his face with his hands. “Okay, so they’ve taken the Magicals into their military forces or given them positions in their ranks. Are they still—Are the non-Magicals forced to serve?”

Percival nods. The story doesn’t change that much. “Anyone who resist is sent to forced labour in the capital.”

“Or has ‘an accident’” Elyan says.

“If by accident you mean they’re left to die in the countryside, easy prey for the dragons that the Lords don’t control,” Freya says, not looking up from the strap she’s buckling and unbuckling around her leg, “then yes.”

“That’s for non-Magicals though,” Mithian says pensively. “Whatever happens to Magicals who resist now? It’s against the Lords’ Law and the Queen’s Rule to do harm to another Magical, or has that changed?”

“Not many resist,” Freya says with bitterness in her voice.

“I guess not many do.” Mithian looks at Freya’s bent head pensively. “But I can’t believe that some don’t. Most Magicals have non-Magical parents, or friends, or siblings, or people they care about.”

Freya shakes her head but says nothing, and Arthur has the distinct impression that she knows more than she’s letting on. Of course she does.

“We need all the intel we can get,” Arthur says, increasingly worried. “We’ve been cooped up here for too long. Even with semi-regular communications with the other Free Villages, the information we get is often too late, too old, incomplete or distorted.”

He looks at Freya. He hates prodding people their secrets. It’s an unwritten rule that they don’t do that, but sometimes, unfortunately, it’s necessary.

“Freya,” he says, “you’re our newest citizen, and a Magical. Before you, it was two years without anybody new coming to Ealdor. Please.” He doesn’t mean to sound like he’s begging but it creeps into his tone anyway.

There’s a sort of slight panic lodged between his lungs, something that flared the moment he walked into the room and saw Mithian’s look. He needs to know everything.

Freya just shrugs. “There are other ways to keep Magicals under control,” she says, eventually, then looks up at Arthur. “You should know.”

Gwen, Elyan, and Percival gasp, and Mithian stands up fast, an angry look on her face, but Arthur stops them all with a wave of his hand. Mithian clenches her jaw, but sits down again. Freya hasn’t moved. She just looks at Arthur with calm eyes.

“Are you saying,” he says through clenched teeth, “that Magicals are using Pendragon devices to bind and control non-cooperative Magicals again?” The vague panic that had flared into him is being quickly replaced by cold anger. He never thought he’d have to deal with this again.

“There are other ways, ,magical ways, to bind magic, Arthur,” Freya says. She rolls her right shoulder, then winces and puts a hand on her ribs. Arthur doesn’t know if she did it on purpose or if it was an unconscious movement, but his eyes move to the intricate black lines she put back onto her skin as soon as she was strong enough to do so.

“But—” Gwen says. “I’m sorry to ask, really, but how can you do magic?”

“It’s not my magic that’s sealed by this,” Freya says raising her arm. “It’s something else. But more importantly, I put it there myself. I chose to have it. They don’t give that choice to some of the Magicals they bind.”

Percival frowns. “How can they keep order and justify their rule then? As far as I know, the Queen’s Law is that all Magicals are above non-Magicals: that it’s their time to rule.”

“They keep it with the usual tricks of the trade,” Freya says, and Arthur doesn’t know if he should be annoyed at how calm and detached her voice is, or if it’s her way of dealing with the situation. He doesn’t know her well enough to read her body language and looks the way he can read Mithian’s or Percival’s, or even Merlin’s. “Fear, bribe, power, and so on,” she says with a wave of her hand.

Gwen looks a bit appalled at her dismissiveness, and Freya must see that because she sighs and rubs the back of her hand across her forehead before fidgeting some more with the straps on her trousers. “Look, everyone in the Cities, even Level Two Magicals are scared of the Lords, or at least wary of them. Some don’t even have magic beyond their dragonspeak powers, but what does it matter, right? When you can have an army of dragons at your command?”

She’s right, of course she is. They’ve been holed up in the North for too long. They don’t know enough about what goes on in the South, about the rules and laws of the cities. When the Coalition collapsed and it became clear that the Lords were taking control, the Queen as their leader, people spread out and ran off, communications were cut or disabled, and it became harder and harder to know what was happening. There really was something to the ‘divide and conquer’ philosophy. And maybe that kept them safe for a while, but now it’s coming back to bite them in the arse.

“How long before one of them reaches us?” Mithian says,

He once believed that neither of them, or anyone that was in the Coalition actually, was ever under the delusion that this was it, that they had found their safe haven and that the days of fighting were over. But now he’s forced to acknowledge that they might not have believed that, but they sure as hell had hoped.

It’s this hope that made them sloppy. They should have kept on top of things. They should have worked on a better communications system, or even sent people out to other villages to get some news. It happened once in a while, for trade and such, but not in the last year and a half.

Arthur lets out a frustrated groan.

“How long ago was the attack on Nemhain?” he says, looking at Elyan.

Elyan takes a moment, rubs his shaved head with his hand. “Not too sure,” he says. “Just before the winter, I would say. The news came through Daobeth, and it’s several weeks late.”

Arthur moves to the rudimentary map of the New Kingdoms on the wall. It’s flawed and incomplete and probably wrong in several places, but they keep it as updated as they can. Daobeth is about as far north as Nemhain, but east of it, closer to the coast. Arthur looks at the map pensively for a moment, trying to figure out their odds. Maybe, in the end, the way they’ve unconsciously isolated themselves will be good for them.

“They’re still way to the south of us,” he says after taking a moment, well aware that the room behind him is silent. “We haven’t traded that much with other Free Villages, at least not since I’ve been here.”

He turns around to look questioningly at Gwen and Elyan, the only ones in the room who have been in Ealdor pretty much since its creation.

Gwen shakes her head. “Not that much since the beginning,” she confirms. “We’ve always been good at being self-sufficient, and we have enough people with different skills to fill in the gaps. Plus this facility was always equipped with tons of useful things that other villages never had.”

Arthur thinks of all the hydroponic cultures they have and the generators, and the self-cleaning water system. There are advantages to living in an abandoned governmental secret research facility. At least there’s something good that came out of one of those damn things.

Elyan snorts and Arthur realises he said that last bit out loud. He rubs his face with both hands again, willing away the tiredness he feels settling over him.

“Then not many people will even know we’re here,” he says.

“Very few,” Elyan says. “Only council members in each village, communication experts, and a few merchants here and there. And those are the ones that know we exist. Even fewer would know where to find us. They just know we’re somewhere north.”

There are so many variables and eventualities they have to consider and the whole conversation is grueling and tedious. Their greatest advantage is being north and underground, but the amount of information they’re lacking is proving to be their greatest weakness. They know next to nothing about the Lords and the only one that can tell them about it is Merlin.

“Arthur, d’you think Merlin—”

“I don’t know.”

“If he could tell us how it works, there would be a better chance…” Gwen says.

“He hasn’t talked about it yet,” Arthur says, harsher than he intended, but the subject of Merlin and his new powers is dropped.

They agree that they need to call for a general assembly to keep everyone appraised of what’s going on. Nothing’s certain now, but to disregard the possibility that a Lord might come knocking on their door eventually isn’t an option. Magicals and non-Magicals alike need to be aware of what will be expected of them if it happens.

“Ask Gaius to come with you,” Elyan says, pulling the wires out of his radio and putting them in a box. “He’s a council member, and people listen to him and respect him. He’ll be able to make them understand without being overly blunt about it.”

“They’ll hate that,” Gwen says with a tired sigh. “Most of them believe... we believed for so long that this would be it. That this is where we get our lives back, or whatever our lives have become. To tell them… tell them that this could be taken away...”

“I know,” Arthur says. “But it’s the truth, Gwen.”

Gwen winces, but quickly pulls herself together, straightening her shoulders. “No. You’re right. We have to be ready. Mithian? I’d like you to come with me in case there’s any question about defenses and weapons. I’m sorry, Arthur. But I think it’s better if it isn’t you.”

“No, I agree,” Arthur says. “It’s better if I’m not there. Mithian knows what she’s doing anyway. More than me.” Mithian only gives him a dark look, but he ignores her.

“They’ll ask about Merlin,” Percival says.

“Better tell them we don’t know anything yet,” Arthur says, and it’s not entirely false.

“Okay,” Gwen says, tying her hair back. “It’s lunch time, so almost everybody will be in the mess hall. I’ll call the meeting for right after. Elyan, you come with me to tell everyone what exactly you heard on the radio. I’m going to go see Gaius.”

Mithian points at him on her way out. “I’ll find you afterwards, Pendragon, and we’ll talk.”

Arthur gives her a weak grin. “Yes, ma'am.”

When they’re all gone, Arthur turns back to the map on the wall. He grabs a pencil from the desk as he goes up to it. He looks at Nemhain for a while, and lets his eyes trace the roads all the way up to Ealdor, wishing that the distance was even greater than it is. He sighs and erases the northern border of Sigan’s kingdom, retracing it to include Nemhain within it.

“Goddamn it!” He throws the pencil across the room and finds absolutely no satisfaction in the way it falls on the floor, small and unbroken. He needs to punch something.

Repeatedly.

It’s not Mithian who finds him later; it’s Merlin.

“You’re here.”

Merlin only shrugs but gives him a small smile. He’s pale—paler than usual— with deep, dark circles under red-rimmed eyes, not to mention the left side of his face is bruised and still a bit swollen from Arthur’s punch. He looks horrible.

Merlin holds the punching bag Arthur was using and looks at him as Arthur wipes the sweat from his forehead with his forearm.

“Go on,” Merlin says with a jerk of his head. “You look like you need it.”

Arthur rolls his eyes and punches the bag a few more times while Merlin holds it, but his heart isn’t in it anymore.

“They’re pretty angry and scared upstairs,” Merlin says when Arthur stops again, taking off the bandages he’d wrapped around his knuckles.

Arthur looks up, surprised. “You know?”

“I was awake when Gwen came to see Gaius,” Merlin says. “She didn’t see me, but I heard everything.”

“So Gaius doesn’t know you’re walking around?”

Merlin shakes his head. “I wanted to see you first.”

“You should be resting.”

“I’ve been resting for a while now. Thanks for the black eye, by the way.”

“You literally asked for it,” Arthur says. He makes himself sound grumpier than he feels just to see Merlin smile, because Merlin’s a weirdo who thinks Arthur’s adorable when he’s grumpy, and normally it’d piss Arthur off, but right now it just makes the whole situation a bit brighter.

Merlin hums. “Why aren’t you there?”

“If you heard Gwen, you know why,” Arthur answers, not looking at Merlin. “And for once, Gwen agreed with me on this.”

Merlin lets out a frustrated groan and Arthur’s back to being tired and angry. And goddammit, Merlin only just woke up, and they haven’t even had time to really talk about anything (not that Merlin has been very forthcoming with his information, mind), and he has to be on Arthur’s case right away?

“Jesus Christ, Merlin. We’ve all just discovered you’re a fucking Lord, and you want to talk—You just—Fuck!”

“I don’t want to talk about the Lord thing,” Merlin says in a soft voice.

Merlin’s body is angled away from Arthur as he looks down at his hands, shoulders hunched. Arthur takes a deep breath and steels himself against whatever’s trying to claw itself out of his chest at the sight of him.

“Well, I don’t want to talk about the ‘not being at the meeting with Gwen’ thing, so.”

“But—”

“What does it matter, Merlin? Why do you care so much whether they like me or not?” He wanted it to sound exasperated, but it comes out angry and, against his will, a bit hurt.

Merlin takes a step back and frowns. “It seems unfair, is all.”

“Who cares?” Arthur throws his arms up. “I don’t! I don’t care if they don’t like me or if I’m their scapegoat when things get hard. If I’m the one they blame. They have a right to! Hell, I deserve it.”

“But it’s false!”

“It isn’t!”

Arthur’s voice resonates and bounces against the metal walls, his breathing loud in the silence that follows. Merlin looks at him, eyes wide and hurt, and Arthur fights against the need to reach out for him and erase the look. He’s never wanted Merlin to look at him that way. He doesn’t do it though, just curls his fists against his thighs.

“Look at your home, Merlin. Look at it.” Arthur points to the faded golden dragon on a red background painted on the door, Pendragon Industries written in black underneath it. “You know what this place was Merlin. You know. I did that, and worse. To you. To your kind. I did that. Can’t you see?”

“What—Arthur what are you saying?” Merlin says after a while, voice low and breaking. “You didn’t—You—I know you didn’t—”

“No, but I would have,” Arthur says, forcing himself to look at Merlin. He says it hard, cold, willing Merlin to understand.

“You don’t know that.”

“You’re an idiot if you think that.”

Merlin clenches his jaw and looks at the floor. There’s something ugly and twisted that fills Arthur, a sudden desire to destroy whatever faith Merlin has in him, because it’s deluded and false and naive, and because nothing good lasts, and he might as well put a stop to it himself.

“I would have, Merlin.” The words are sharp and bitter in his mouth, like a lie, but he says them anyway. “I would have done what my father wanted me to do. I would have taken over the company when he retired, and I would have done the same things he did. The same things my grandfather did before him, and so on for generations when the first Pendragon invented the first device to Seal magic and extinguish the threat of it. I would have supported anti-magic politicians and given money to lobbyists, and pushed for more stringent anti-magic laws.

“I would have continued to enforce the Binding of all Magicals. Hell, maybe I would even have condoned all those secret experiments I didn’t know about until he died, but I’m sure he would have told me about them eventually. I would have participated in and supported the sanctioned, slow choking of all things magic. I’m a Pendragon, Merlin. I wouldn’t have thought twice about putting you in a secret facility like this one. You, an aberration, three times Sealed—I would have hated you and I would have been scared of you, and I would have never been your friend, or even touched you or kissed you or fucked you. Ever. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He’s aware that he’s shouting and of the fact that Merlin’s just looking at him, just looking, fists clenched at his sides, jaw tense and still saying nothing. It just makes Arthur angrier. He wants Merlin to get angry too, to be disgusted with Arthur the way he’s disgusted with himself. He wants Merlin to walk away.

“People like me, we created the world that binded you. We decided who was worthy of using magic, and who wasn’t. We used Magicals for our own purposes. We bribed politicians and made more money with the power we had. We created this world. You think I don’t know what they’re saying? The Magicals here? That the world would be full of dragons—yes, nothing we can do to change that—but that the Lords and the Queen wouldn’t be in power, wouldn’t break families apart and kill non-Magicals. They wouldn’t use the powers that were denied to them for so long against others if it weren’t for people like me. For the Pendragons.”

Arthur takes a deep breath. “They’re right, Merlin.”

His hands are shaking and there’s cold sweat drying over his skin, but he doesn’t care. He waits for Merlin to punch him, to turn around and leave, to never let Arthur touch him again.

“That’s such fucking bullshit,” Merlin grits out through clenched teeth.

Arthur laughs at that, an empty, joyless laugh—too loud and sudden—that shakes his bones and makes Merlin flinch. Arthur shakes his head and looks at him, really looks at him. Merlin’s tall and skinny but wiry; he’s way stronger than he appears. But right now he just looks confused and sad and hurt, and incredibly tired. But there’s defiance there, too, in the tilt of his chin and the glint in his eyes. Arthur knows him well enough to know that look, the line of his spine, and the set of his jaw that is so utterly Merlin, that stubbornness that enrages Arthur and pushes at him until he’s angry and annoyed but still cannot walk away.

As suddenly as it came over him, everything in Arthur—his anger, his fear, his hurt—evaporates, everything but the desire to un-hurt Merlin somehow, even though he’s only told the truth: that Merlin’s an idiot for not seeing it for what it is. And that pisses him off, the way Merlin can do that to him. The way he makes Arthur soft when he doesn’t want to be.

But before he can do anything, Merlin walks up to him and shoves him. Hard. Enough that Arthur falls back against some of the training equipment behind him. He’s so busy trying to regain his balance that he doesn’t see the punch aimed at his jaw until it’s too late.

“Merlin! That fucking hurt! Jesus Christ.”

“I fucking hope it did, you arsehole,” Merlin says, taking an unsteady step back and crossing his arms over his chest. Arthur glares at him.

“Oh don’t look at me like that, you fucking deserved it,” Merlin says in a huff.

Arthur rubs at his jaw. “Shit, I didn’t know you could punch like that. Especially not after...”

“Glad I can still surprise you. I hope it put some fucking sense in that stupidly pretty head of yours, because that was an incredible amount of bullshit you were spewing. Is that really what you think? God you’re such an idiot!”

“I’m the idiot? I’m the idiot?”

“Yes! You!” Merlin’s back to being angry, hands fisted. Arthur’s keeping an eye on those now. “All this nonsense about ‘would have been this and that’. Who fucking cares?”

“Um, I don’t know if you’ve talked with your fellow Magicals, Merlin, but a truckload of them do care, and also a fair amount of non-Magicals agree with them.”

“So what? That doesn’t mean they’re fucking right. So they need someone to blame and you happen to be there. Hurray!”

“Merlin—”

“It never happened! I don’t know if you were there, or if you were awake for the last ten years, Arthur, but the world was set on fire by fucking dragons of all things. And all these things you say you would have done, and let me be dubious about that—”

Arthur snorts, but clenches his jaw when Merlin sends him a dark look.

“All those things you said,” he continues, “they never happened, will never happen. And yeah, maybe the state of the world before the Invasion had an impact on the way things went with the Lords and The Queen, but honestly? It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t.”

Arthur opens his mouth to protest, but Merlin’s there in a flash with his hand over Arthur’s mouth. He’s breathing hard, like he’s exhausted himself, and Arthur can see perspiration on his temples. He curls his fingers in Merlin’s shirt, involuntarily tugging at him a little. When Merlin speaks again his voice is softer and kinder.

“You can’t keep hating yourself for what ifs and maybes and would haves, Arthur. Things are what they are, and if you’re honest with yourself, you’ve done nothing but good, or tried to, since the world ended and we got stuck in this one, and that’s what counts.”

“Maybe you don’t know everything,” Arthur says against Merlin’s palm. Merlin slides his hand off Arthur’s mouth and gingerly traces the edge of Arthur’s jaw where it throbs, a bruise probably already forming.

‘Maybe not,” Merlin says. “But I know you’ve done nothing but good since you’ve arrived here, and I know that people like Mithian and Percival, who are also fundamentally good and, in Mithian’s case anyway, have no patience for bullshit or nonsense, wouldn’t have followed you during the Coalition, or after, if they didn’t think you were someone worth it. And I trust Mithian’s judgement.”

“As anyone should,” Arthur says, grinning slightly.

“Damn right,” Merlin says, returning the smile a little before becoming serious again. He leans in until his forehead touches Arthur’s and their lips are close. “Just—Just try okay? Try to let go.”

So close, Arthur can smell his own sweat and Merlin’s, but also the herbal soap they all use for washing, coming from Merlin’s hair. Something tight squeezes around his heart. Something secret and buried in his ribcage that he always refuses to acknowledge, and on which he pushes down again, for fear that its enormity will choke him.

Merlin sighs and steps back a little before leaning in again and brushing his lips against Arthur’s. “Now go wash,” he says, pulling back. “You fucking stink.”

Arthur laughs softly and pushes at Merlin’s shoulder.

“Why do you care so much?” Arthur says into the room, confused and a bit too fond for his comfort.

Merlin looks back over his shoulder as he’s about the leave the room and rolls his eyes. “And you think I’m the idiot?”

He opens the door just in time to come face to face with Mithian.

“Hey, Mith!” he says joyfully.

“You’re here,” she says, raising an eyebrow.

“Your powers of observation are as good as Arthur’s.”

Mithian looks at Arthur over Merlin’s shoulder.

“Oh good,” she says looking at the bruise on Arthur’s jaw. “I see Merlin already took care of it.”

Arthur paces his room. He should go see Merlin. He should talk to him. Merlin had made it all about Arthur once again, and Arthur got lost in his anger and then he’d only wanted to ignore it, get things back to what they were usually. He’d momentarily forgotten that Merlin had just come out of a magical coma and was dealing with a fuckload of his own issues, but as always he’d just found a way to not talk about it and Arthur had completely fallen for it.

Shit.

Just as he’s about to put on his trousers, a knock comes on his door. Arthur opens it slightly, peering into the dimly lit hallway to see Merlin there, head bent, wearing only his pajama bottoms and one of his shirts—soft from use and countless washings. He’s barefoot on the metallic floor, and somehow it’s the sight of his bare toes peeking out from the frayed edges of his bottoms that pulls at Arthur’s heart, softens his anger and annoyance at himself.

“I don’t want to talk about what happened,” Merlin says, his voice is steady with a bit of a challenge in it. He comes in and closes the door. “I want you to fuck me.”

Arthur looks at him for a moment. Merlin’s leaning against the door, a defiant tilt to his chin, fists clenched at his sides, and Arthur likes this. He smiles, crowds Merlin until his chest almost touches him. “I think I can manage that.”

Merlin’s whole body relaxes and his demeanour changes. It’s almost like he’s relieved, and Arthur feels steadier too. This is familiar territory.

“Make me feel it,” Merlin says, low and and playful as he rolls his hips into Arthur to make him feel his already half-hard cock.

“Aye, aye,” Arthur says before kissing Merlin hard. He leans into him with his whole body, trapping him between his chest and the door.

Merlin moans deep in his throat and bites at Arthur’s lips with little urgent nips until Arthur opens his mouth and lets him lick inside. It’s wet and filthy and Arthur enjoys the burn on his scalp as Merlin grabs at his hair and pulls too harshly, moving Arthur’s head where he wants it to be.

Merlin arches his back and rolls his hips some more, and Arthur grabs them and pushes against him, moaning at the friction.

“Come on, Arthur.” Merlin licks Arthur's jaw up to his ear, says “make me fucking feel it,” and bites on Arthur’s earlobe.

Arthur yelps and pushes Merlin back against the door roughly, hand wide on his chest. “You little shit.”

Merlin just smirks and licks his lips, pulls his shirt off in one swift movement. “Well? What are you waiting for? he says, sliding a hand down his chest, long fingers dipping below the waist of his pajamas to grab himself.

It’s sort of lewd and strangely dirty how he holds himself, hips off the door, biting his wet bottom lip. It looks obscene in the harsh white light of the room, the way he moans as he pulls his cock out while staring at Arthur, and Arthur’s mesmerized by him.

He can’t quite move until Merlin swipes the head of his cock with his thumb, slowly brings it to his mouth and licks, then rubs one of his nipples with it.

Arthur’s on him before he can think. He grabs Merlin’s hand and holds Merlin’s arm up over his head, fingers digging hard in his skin. Merlin moans and laughs.

“That what you want?” Arthur says as he licks Merlin’s neck, his other hand tight like a vice on Merlin’s hip.

Merlin tilts his head to the side and fakes a yawn. “Bored now.”

Arthur bites on his shoulder, stifling a laugh that quickly changes into a deep groan when Merlin pulls Arthur’s head back by his hair.

“I’m not going to fucking break, Arthur. Just give it to me. Make it go away.”

Arthur doesn’t know if it’s the edge of Merlin’s voice or the way his teeth dug in his lip when he said fucking or the way his eyes narrowed with anger, but something snaps inside of him.

“Oh, I’ll make you break.”

“That still remains to be seen.”

It’s a challenge. Arthur knows it’s a challenge and it is on.

He slips a leg between Merlin’s thighs, grabs his hips with two hands and pushes against him. The force of it makes the door shake in its frame. Arthur kisses Merlin urgently, more teeth than tongue and rolls into him, hard and fast as Merlin’s fingernails dig in Arthur’s shoulders. A long shiver travels along Arthur’s spine down to his toes at the feeling.

With a quick sudden movement, he flips Merlin over pushing his chest against the door with a hand between his shoulder blades.

“Yes,” Merlin says, lips on the door, his arms braced against it.

Arthur drops Merlin’s pajamas to the floor, spreading his legs apart with his knee and covers Merlin’s body with his own, making sure to trap Merlin's hard cock under him.

“Lube,” Arthur says with a hand in front of Merlin’s eyes, and barely waits for the customary flash of gold before he pushes two fingers inside Merlin without warning.

Merlin cries out and moans, tries to arch into it, but Arthur stops him with his forearm across his shoulder, leaning all of his weight against Merlin.

He nuzzles behind Merlin ears, licks the shell of it. “Feeling it yet, Emrys?”

“Is that all you got, you arse?” Merlin says, lips parted and breathing hot wet air across his shoulder when he turns to glare at Arthur. He tries to push himself off the door with his hands, so Arthur leans harder on him, pushing a third finger inside of him with a mean twist of his wrist that makes Merlin give up and collapse against the door.

“You going to fuck me eventually?” he says. “Or do I have to take care of everything myself?”

Arthur continues to pump his fingers inside Merlin, rolling his hips against Merlin’s, his cock hard inside his briefs.

“Condom,” he says, but before Merlin can do the spell, Arthur pulls his head back by his hair, bites at Merlin’s neck, and drags his tongue along his jawline. He lets the sound of Merlin’s high whimper fill his stomach with heat. “I swear to God if you give me a glow-in-the-dark cock like last time, I’m never fucking you again.”

“Well, you’re not fucking me right now so that’s no different,” Merlin bites back, voice thin and breathy, then pushes angrily against Arthur, shuddering when the motion sends Arthur’s fingers even deeper inside of him.

“I would be if you’d stop being a fucking smartass for a change.”

“Promises, promises,” Merlin says but his eyes flash gold, and Arthur pulls his fingers out immediately. He pushes his pants just low enough so he can take his cock out.

He gives it a few rough pulls, muffling his groans against Merlin’s back, before pushing inside of him in one long, slow slide. Merlins scrambles at the door, trying to find purchase, his sweaty palm sliding over the surface.

Once Arthur’s buried deep inside of Merlin, he doesn’t wait for him to adjust, he starts fucking into him with short, quick snaps of his hips. He snakes an arm around Merlin’s waist, loving how warm and sweaty his skin is over his stomach.

“Come on,” Merlin says. “Fucking fuck me already, you lazy dick.”

“Will you just fucking shut up, already? For fuck’s sake.”

Arthur pins Merlin once more against the door with his chest, biting and licking at his salty shoulder and neck. Merlin moans and pants as Arthur mouths at his cheek too, red and hot under his tongue.

Arthur wants to see Merlin sob with the desire to come. He wants him to beg for it, to fall apart under Arthur’s hands, his mouth, his cock. He pulls his hips back a little, keeping a steady hand between Merlin’s shoulders, and drags Merlin’s arse out a little with the other, so he can’t fuck into him with longer, rougher thrusts.

Merlin whines and pants, swearing at Arthur under his breath, his skin red and shiny under the light, and Arthur bends down to lick a long stripe along his spine up to the first bump at the base of his neck to bite hard on it.

“Good enough for you?” he says, nosing at Merlin’s hair on his nape, inhaling the smell of him that makes his hips stutter for a moment because it’s so fucking good and so fucking Merlin it drives him wild.

“You—You wish. Is that—Is that really the best you can do?” Merlins says, looking at Arthur over his shoulder like it’s a fucking game they’re playing and he thinks he’s got the upper hand.

Arthur decides that Merlin’s too coherent if he can still make complete sentences and he needs to change that. He takes a deep fortifying breath because Merlin’s arse is his favourite place right now and he’s loathe to leave it, but he pulls out nonetheless and drops to his knees.

“What the fuck do you think—” Merlin’s undoubtedly clever insult turns in a surprised shout when Arthur spreads his arse wide open with his hands and sucks hard on his hole.

“Oh, fuck.”

Arthur grins and pushes his tongue inside Merlin. The magic Merlin uses as lube makes Arthur’s lips tingle and he takes a moment to feel it, dragging them over Merlin’s red and abused rim before sucking harshly on it again.

Merlin braces himself on the door, head low between his shoulders, and pushes back against Arthur’s tongue. His loud and heavy breaths mix with the wet sucking sounds Arthur’s making with his mouth, and it’s obscene.

Arthur fucks him with his tongue until his jaw aches, then he drags it along Merlin’s crack and fucks him some more. He sucks and bites at the tender flesh until all he can hear from Merlin are whines and harsh breaths taken through his nose.

The whole room smells like sex and sweat and Arthur’s dizzy with the smell of Merlin and his taste in his mouth, and it might be strange, but right now there’s nowhere else he’d rather be than with his face buried in Merlin’s arse. He’s so hard it fucking hurts but he’s not getting off until Merlin’s completely undone.

Arthur pushes one, two fingers, back inside Merlin, then crooks them until he finds the right spot that makes Merlin swear, sharp and loud. Merlin’s legs tremble and shake and his toes curl and uncurl against the floor.

“Arthur, please—”

Arthur pulls off, taking a huge gulp of fresh air.

“Feeling it now, Merlin?” Merlin only groans and pushes back against Arthur’s hand. “Good enough,” Arthur says and pushes his tongue back between his fingers. He reaches around to grabs at Merlin’s cock, hot and hard in his hand and it only takes a couple of rough pulls for him to come, spilling all over Arthur’s hand and the floor.

Merlin collapses on his knees, breathing too fast and harshly. He’s shaking, and Arthur wraps his arms around his waist and drapes his body over his back to hold him close through the aftershocks.

He can’t help it, though, he’s just so hard, and he humps against Merlin thighs trying to take the edge off until Merlin’s recovered, but when Merlin pushes back weakly Arthur doesn’t hesitates and slides into him.

He keeps Merlin’s shoulders against the floor with one hand, grabs his hip with the other and fucks into him, rough and frantic and not caring if it’s too much. His orgasm hits him without warning and he’s momentarily blindsided by it. His skin feels like it’s on fire.

He lets himself drop beside Merlin, turns on his side to look at him, and can’t help the laugh that escapes him when Merlin smiles at him, all tired and dopy

“Holy shit,” Merlin says.

“Insert one of Gwaine’s jokes about my magical dick here,” Arthur says between pants. His voice sounds as wrecked as he feels.

Merlin snorts and laughs, unable to stop. Arthur picks up Merlin’s hand and kisses the knuckles before wrapping his arm around Merlin’s waist. He buries his nose in his neck, and smiles.

When Arthur walks by the generator room on his way to dinner, he peers inside to see Merlin slide a hand over the long curved side of the machine while he goes around it. The golden glow of his eyes is reflected over and over by the metallic surfaces as he twists some lever with careful but sure fingers. He whispers something too low for Arthur to hear, his lips so close to the surface, his breath fogs it.

Merlin always puts a soundproofing spell over the generator when he works, but Arthur still has to talk a bit louder to make himself heard. “Should I close the door?” he says. “You two seem like you need a moment.”

Merlin raises his head, the gold of his eyes fading back to blue, and smirks. “You jealous?”

“Please.” Arthur huffs and fiddles with one of the piston until Merlin slaps his fingers away. “Like I ever stood a chance.”

“You can’t stand in the way of true love, I’m afraid.”

“I am crushed.”

“Don’t cry, Arthur. I’ll still accept your sad poetry.” Merlin says petting the side of the generator tenderly. “And I hope one day you’ll find a love as complete and fulfilling as ours,”

Arthur raises an eyebrow. “One can only hope.”

“That’s the spirit!”

Arthur snorts and shakes his head as Merlin smiles before going back to his work. Arthur leans against the wall and watches him do his do thing for a while.

Arthur spots a red mark on the top of Merlin’s spine and smiles to himself. It’s strange, this role reversal thing they had going on last night. Merlin’s always been there for Arthur since the first day Arthur arrived in Ealdor. He’s the one that comes to him after hunts, or when he sees Arthur’s in a bad mood and thinks he might need a good fuck to shake himself out of it. Arthur’s pretty sure this was the first time Merlin had needed him that way.

It’s a bit dizzying, especially since it’s Merlin who sought him out. Arthur never thought he could be that for Merlin, that he could be the one giving Merlin what he needs instead of the opposite..

“I’m sorry, you know?” Merlin says without looking up. “For the…” He fake-punches himself on the jaw.

Arthur waves a hand. “Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing. Didn’t feel a thing.”

“Didn’t sound like you didn’t feel a thing to me.”

“I was being kind.”

“Is that so?”

“Didn’t want to bruise your fragile ego, you know?”

“You keep telling yourself that, Pendragon.”

Arthur throws his head back and laughs, joy spreading warm and soothing inside of him. Merlin laughs right along with him, and maybe it lasts a little longer than it logically should, but Arthur doesn’t care. “Right,” he says after catching his breath. “I’m going to dinner. You coming?”

Merlin averts his eyes and bites his lip, turning another lever with a quick flash of magic. “I’m not hungry.”

“Merlin…”

“I’ll grab something later, don’t worry.”

Arthur pinches his lips together and takes a step toward him, then stops. “Okay,” he says eventually. “Okay.”

Merlin gives him a quick, grateful smile.

“I’m going to close the door and leave you two to it, then” Arthur says.

“Awww, bless your romantic heart. I knew you’d understand,” Merlin says, hand over his heart. Arthur just shakes his head and rolls his eyes.

“Come on, Arthur. Can you blame them?” Gwaine says.

“Yes, I bloody well can! It’s ridiculous. We’re talking about Merlin, here. Merlin. He’s been living here almost from the start. He helped build this community. They know him.”

It turns out that Mithian was right. People don’t like that Merlin’s a Lord. They’re not too obvious about it, but Arthur has lived in Ealdor long enough to know when something’s off. It’s not just fear at having their home and safety further threatened, it’s anger and wariness at the possibility of said threat coming from the inside.

Logically, Arthur can’t blame them. Lords are only known to control, abuse, conquer, and generally use their powers to keep themselves, well, in power. But that doesn’t change the fact that Arthur’s fucking pissed off at the lot of them.

“Power corrupts,” Gwaine says, playing devil’s advocate, but it doesn’t make the itch—the slow burn under Arthur’s skin—of wanting to punch him in the face go away.

“It’s Merlin,” he says again. And maybe repeating it enough will make them understand because he tries to infuse the name with everything Merlin is and therefore could never be. They’re a bunch of fucking idiots if they can’t understand that. “He’d never—He would never—”

“Arthur,” Gwen says, with a soft touch to his wrist. “We know that, but—”

“But people are afraid,” Elyan says, rubbing his head with his hand and avoiding Arthur’s eyes. “It’s all a bit of a mess, isn’t it? What with the news of what happened to Nemhain, then Merlin’s new powers, and now all those whispers about a rebellion in the South. It’s—It’s a lot to take in.”

“I fail to see how that’s a fucking excuse to be fucking morons,” Arthur says.

Gwen sighs in a way that makes her sound disapproving and makes Arthur feel guilty and defiant at the same time. He almost wants to scream you’re not my mother! at her, and the only thing that stops him from doing so is that he’s not, actually, a child anymore.

“It would be a bit better,” Gwen says, “if he didn’t spend all his time holed up in the infirmary or his room, and came to the gatherings or ate with us like he used to.”

“It’s only been a few days,” Arthur says. “He needs space and time.”

“You could maybe talk to him?” Gwen says.

“He doesn’t talk, Gwen,” Arthur throws his hand up, exasperated. “Not to you, not to me, not even to his mother. Not to anyone! I thought there was this thing here where we don’t harass people about their personal business. Where we respect their right not to want to talk about certain things.”

“I know but—” Gwen grimaces and Arthur can see how it pains her to be pushing so much, and he understands, he really does. Ealdor’s a fragile ecosystem that needs to be preserved if they want to continue living the way they have been doing.

“He’s family,” Mithian says in the silence, and everyone turns to her. “He’s family,” she repeats louder, and her expression says that as far as she’s concerned this is enough. Arthur has never loved her more than in this moment.

Gwen nods and stands up. “I have to speak with the council,” she says, but she squeezes Arthur’s shoulder on her way out and gives him a small smile.

“Thank you,” Arthur tells Mithian, the both of them on their way back to their rooms.

“I meant it,” Mithian says, stopping at Freya’s door and knocking lightly. “Make sure Merlin knows too.”

“Try not to lose too badly this time,” he says to her, nodding at Freya when she opens the door, a pack of cards held loosely between her fingers. Mithian rolls her eyes and closes the door behind her.

Arthur stands alone for a moment in the deserted hallway. It’s late and the whole of Ealdor is quiet, except for some muffled voices behind closed doors and the familiar thrum of the generator pumping electricity and magic all over. The sound reminds him of Merlin, and how he talks softly and affectionately to the blasted machine, polishing it and fixing it even when it seems like it’s beyond hope.

Before he knows it, Arthur finds himself at the infirmary.

The door’s opened and he leans against the doorway for a moment. Gaius is writing in some files at his desk and Merlin is restocking the medicine cabinet, his back to the door.

Gaius raises his head when Arthur takes a step in. He takes a look at him, then at Merlin, and nods. He grabs his files, shoving them under his arm, and gives Arthur one of his famous raised eyebrow on his way out that makes Arthur—to his great horror—blush. Trust the man to see more than people would give him credit for. He even closes the door behind him, and the click of the doorknob sends a small wave of embarrassment through Arthur. He rubs at his neck, trying to dissipate the feeling.

“Merlin,” he says, voice cracking slightly, too loud in the silence of the room.

Merlin’s shoulders tense but he doesn’t turn around. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Merlin you’ll have to—”

“Oh god, is that what it’s like?” he says with a dry laugh.

“Like what?”

“Me always nagging you to talk about your feelings?”

Arthur snorts. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well fuck.”

“Welcome to my world.”

Arthur opens his mouth to try and coax him into telling him something, anything. He hates the way Merlin’s hunched on himself, dark circles under his eyes, pale and skittish, but Merlin interrupts him before he can, his voice falsely casual.

“There’s a rebellion brewing in the South.”

“It’s just a rumour. Elyan told—”

“Apparently, they’re going from village to village trying to get people to fight with them.”

“I know, Merlin, I—”

“And Elyan said they might even have been in Nemhain before Sigan took it and—”

“Shut up, Merlin.”

Merlin shakes his head with the ghost of a smile on his lips, but when he turns to pick up another bottle his fingers shake, and he has to wipe his hand on his trousers before grabbing it.

Arthur crosses the room in long strides and grabs Merlin’s wrist lightly. Merlin winces and pulls away, but Arthur only tightens his grip, taking the bottle and putting it back on the table carefully.

Merlin’s looking at his feet, small tremors going through his body that Arthur can feel under his fingertips. He’s tensed like he’s ready to bolt at any moment.

Something in Arthur snaps, and that flare that he continually pushes down roars its head out, bright and red and urgent. He grapples at Merlin with clumsy hands, pushing past his vague attempts at pulling away until Merlin’s in his arms with one of Arthur’s hands on the small of his back and the other on the back of Merlin’s head. Merlin’s breath is warm and dry against Arthur’s neck.

He holds Merlin tightly against him and waits for Merlin’s arms to move and wrap themselves around Arthur’s waist. It’s so slow and tentative, and Merlin’s never been like that with him. He always pushes, always fights back in a way that’s infuriating, yes, but also that’s him, and Arthur wants that back. He wants that Merlin back.

Arthur kisses Merlin’s temple. “I’m not scared of you,” he says against his hair.

“I am,” Merlin says, so soft it’s barely audible, but Arthur feels his lips move on his skin and it sends a shiver along his spine and breaks his heart.

In hindsight, it shouldn’t surprise Arthur to discover that Merlin’s left Ealdor, but it does. It does in a way that hurts and burns and makes it hard to breathe for a moment until he can get enough air in his lungs, past the panic lodged in his throat, and look at the situation clearly.

“I’m going after him,” he says the moment Hunith walks in the infirmary where he’s standing with Gaius.

She looks relieved for a moment, but then shakes her head. “It’s too dangerous Arthur. The dragons—”

“It’ll be fine,” he says. “I made it here, didn’t I?”

“You had Mithian and Percival with you,” Gaius says.

“Doesn’t matter. I’m going to bring him back.”

There’s no more arguing after that; there’s nothing they can say. He packs himself a bag and grabs his guns and ammunition. Every single movement is calculated and known. He’s gone through this process so many times in his life—efficient and economical—that it’s comforting in a way, keeping the worry twisting his stomach at bay. The anger too. The bright, hot fire of it that’d make him reckless and impulsive.

He tries to avoid everyone on his way out; he doesn't want the confrontation. But this is Ealdor, so he’s not really surprised when he can’t quite make it.

Percival stops him from getting into the lift with a heavy hand on his shoulder.

Arthur sighs and turns around, raising an eyebrow at him. He doesn’t expect Percy to beg him to stay or anything, he’s not that sentimental, but he could stop Arthur with a well aimed punch, of that Arthur has no doubt.

“I should go with you,” Percivals says.

“No. No need for anyone else to risk their life.”

“Is this one of those thing that you need to do on your own or something? For… personal growth?”

“What?” Arthur laughs. “Mate, you get bored and read too many of Mrs. Williams self-help books?”

Percival grins a little and looks embarrassed, and it’ll never stop being funny to Arthur, because the man is so big and should be scary-looking, but he’s really the sweetest bloke Arthur’s ever met.

“You stay here and help Mith,” he says.

For a moment he thinks Percival’s going to argue more. He stares down at Arthur like he’s pondering whether or not to knock him out before or after throwing him over his shoulder and locking him in his own room.

“One week,” Percival says, glaring at him.

“Right.”

Percival raises a finger. “One week, and then I’m going to have to go and save your arse. Again.”

“As I remember, I did save yours a couple of times in return,” Arthur says.

“One. Week.”

“Okay! I get it!”

Percival smiles. “Now go get that stupid boyfriend of yours.”

“What—Fuck. You spend too much time with Mithian,” Arthur says, pointing at him.

Percival just shrugs and walks away with a wave over his shoulder. Gwaine’s waiting for him a few meters away and he gives Arthur a little salute.

“Tell Merlin he still owes me from the last poker game. He can’t get away that easily,” Gwaine says.

“Yeah, yeah,” Arthur mumbles, getting into the lift.

Mithian’s waiting for him outside. Because of course she is.

“You’re not coming,” he says as soon as he sees her.

She pushes herself off the wall, clearly unimpressed. “I don’t actually give a fuck about what you’re thinking right now, Arthur. I’m coming.”

“No, you’re not,” he says, then he looks up to see Freya sitting cross-legged on the roof of the bunker. “Neither of you.”

“Arthur—”

“No.”

“Goddammit Arthur, you can’t just go traipsing in the wilderness making friends with fucking dragons without me,” she says.

“I need you to stay here, Mith. To help in case something happens.”

“They did well before us, Arthur.”

“I just—I need you to stay here.” He doesn’t know how to explain it to her. How to explain that he feels responsible and protective, and that he trusts her to take care of the people here, if anything should happen. That it’s reassuring somehow, and that he needs to just not worry about anything else but finding Merlin right now.

He doesn’t know when he started feeling this way about Ealdor, but it’s as close to home as he ever got, and it’s full of people he cares about and well—

“Oh god, I hate you,” Mithian says with a groan.

“What?”

“You’re doing that thing with your face,” she says, moving her hand in front of his nose.

“What thing?”

“That thing where you look all earnest and slightly vulnerable, like you have feelings and stuff. It’s annoying. I can’t tell you no when that happens.” She wrinkles her nose like it’s a very disgusting thought.

Arthur doesn’t know what to say.

“Jesus Christ, fine,” Mithian says, throwing her arms up. “I’ll stay. Maybe we can have a hunt in a couple of days too, just to keep people busy and all.” She sighs and groans in frustration. “You don’t even know where he went.”

Arthur’s been thinking about that since he learned that Merlin had gone actually. There’s no way Merlin went south because he wouldn’t risk meeting another Lord or falling under The Queen’s radar. There’s pretty much nothing to the east that could help him, only fields and woods and then the sea. Arthur’s certain Merlin went west, then north, to the mountains that rise behind Ealdor, with caves and ravines full of dragons. And bandits. It’s this, more than the dragons, that worries Arthur.

“I’ll be back soon,” Arthur says, and gives Mithian a reassuring smile. They just look at each other for a moment. They’ve been in similar situations before, countless times actually, just about to step into the unknown where they don’t know what to expect other than danger and a high chance of being seriously dead. This is the first time they’re not going into it together, and Arthur knows Mithian’s struggling with that. He doesn’t want to linger on the thought too much himself because knowing she won’t be at his back well... It’s a bit frightening and he has no time for that right now.

Mithian nods stiffly but doesn’t say anything more, and Arthur squeezes her fingers briefly.

“Arthur,” Freya says.

When he looks up at her, Freya’s eyes glow gold as she mumbles a few words under her breath. Arthur feels warmth seep into his skin softly; it’s light and strangely comforting.

“Small protection spell,” Freya says with a small grin.

“Thanks. Take care.”

“You too.”

With a last look toward Mithian he turns to the west and starts walking.

Merlin’s clearly not a hunter. It’s surprisingly easy to pick up his trail. It’s been raining so much in the past several days that the ground is still soggy and muddy and it doesn’t take long for Arthur to find Merlin’s footprints. He assumes they’re his anyway since there aren’t that many people around these parts that just up and go and take leisurely walks around the countryside.

Arthur doesn’t know if Merlin didn’t think about it, or if he thought no one would come after him (does he even know Arthur?) but Merlin didn’t even think about erasing his tracks with magic.

Arthur plans to tease him relentlessly about it when—if—when he finds him. After he’s done tearing him a new arsehole.

The mountains loom over him, black and grey against the bright blue sky.

Years ago, when he was barely a teenager and Uther hadn’t yet started grooming him to be the head of Pendragon Industries, he went to a similar place with his father. One of the rare father-son trips because it was one of those years when Uther had a guilt-ridden moment and made some kind of attempt at proper fatherhood.

It’d been fun though, and however hard Arthur tried afterward to look at this trip with the same amount of cold, discerning truth he applied to everything else about their relationship since his father’s death, he couldn’t quite shake the fuzzy, rosy-tinged layer of childhood nostalgia that came with the memories.

Uther had bought Arthur a new camera for the trip, and they’d gone and spent two weeks at the family cabin, walking along trails and fishing in the lake, and generally not talking about anything but what was around them. Arthur can’t remember any other moment with his father where things didn’t always turn to politics, or the Pendragon company, or Magicals, or—on very rare, though painfully inebriated and sorrow-filled occasions—his mother. He still has the picture—taken by a fellow fisherman—of him and Uther in their small boat, Arthur holding up his first catch, and Uther’s arm around his shoulders, smiling and proud, like a clichéd Kodak moment. Arthur can’t remember any other time where his father had that look on his face. He probably wouldn’t believe his recollection of it if he didn’t still have the photo to prove it to himself.

The memories cling to him for a moment, heavy and golden and happy, twisting at something small and fragile inside him that Arthur doesn’t like remembering is still there, until the perpetual faint smell of sulphur in the air becomes more insistent and wipes them away.

Arthur doesn’t lose a second, his instincts kicking in before his thoughts catch up. He’s kept close to the sparse tree line since he set out from Ealdor a couple hours earlier, and he jumps sideways, grabs his gun from the strap on his back, and flattens himself against a large tree stump.

He covers his clothes with mud and sits very still. He hears the flap of the wings first, and pushes instinctively against the stump behind him as if he could melt into it.

The dragon is red and black like embers, with a long tail ending in spikes. It’s looking straight ahead, and Arthur’s relieved that it doesn’t seem to be looking for food.

It suddenly stops though, hovering in place with vast, rapid beats of its wings. It cocks its head to the side, as if listening to something, and the movement is so recognisably human that it makes Arthur’s skin crawl.

He holds his breath.

After a moment, the dragon blows smoke through its wide nostrils, black and sulphuric, and lets out a piercing cry that has Arthur gripping his gun tighter and trying not to put his hands over his ears, lest the movement attracts the dragon’s attention. Finally the dragon turns to the south-east and flies away.

Arthur waits until he can’t see it anymore, and then waits ten more minutes to be sure, before standing up and picking up Merlin’s trail once more.

It’s several hours—and a couple of dragons flying close enough to make him very nervous—before the tracks veer off from the woods’ edge and into the vast openness of a valley. Arthur stops, disbelieving. The flat ground stretches far in front of him until it becomes rocky hills with sharp edges that quickly meld into the base of the mountain.

“Merlin, what the fuck are you doing?” he says under his breath.

Walking across open ground like that is just asking to be dragon snack. Unless, of course, that’s how Merlin was planning to ‘figure out his powers’: by basically making himself bait, asking for any flying lizard passing by to try and take a bite out of him, hoping he’d figure out his powers in time. Which isn’t a reassuring thought considering the last time Merlin faced a dragon, Arthur had to punch him in the face.

More frustrating still is that there is no way Arthur can venture through that valley during the day. Dragons sleep at night, so he’s fairly confident he can risk it once night comes, if that’s what it takes—damn you Merlin—but there’s no way he can during the day. He’ll have to wait for the sun to go down, and he hopes that Merlin will stop for the night, allowing Arthur to catch up to him. He doesn’t see why Merlin wouldn’t, after walking all day.

He tucks himself under the hollow made by two fallen trees, takes out a bit of food, and settles in to wait.

He’s used to this. He’s done it several times before, hours and hours waiting in holes and caves and vacated buildings, shoulder to shoulder with other soldiers, other hunters. It’s the first time he’s on his own for it, though. It’s strange. It’s not like they’d talk much—they’d be keeping sounds to a minimum—but there was still a feeling of companionship, of support. Arthur would spend his time looking around and picking up on people’s little impatient twitches, the way they’d run their fingers along their weapon, making sure everything’s alright, or the way they’d count their ammunition. Some would mouth words to songs or tap quiet rhythms with their fingers.

Some would pray.

Arthur liked paying attention to all of these little details. It kept his thoughts from scattering. When it was too dark to really see, that’s when he couldn’t help linger over all the things he’d done wrong. All of his guilt would rise in his chest and settle around him, heavy and suffocating.

Later, he’d learned how to at least channel his thoughts into some kind of purpose, but that didn’t stop him from knowing, from seeing all the things he’d seen in his father’s files after his death: the names of people used and imprisoned and abused, speeches full of hatred and anger, secrets he wished he could erase from his mind, things he wished he could have stopped from happening.

It’s surprising then, that without any conscious prodding, he only thinks of Ealdor. He makes up ways in his head to protect it better, strategies they could use against a Lord with dragons and an army. It’s time, he thinks, for little Peter and Mary to learn how to shoot, and Melody’s showing great skill at enchantments; it’d be nice if she learned how to enchant their weapons and ammunition. Now that the rains are over, they can start planting again. That’ll make Hunith happy. Joanna’s going to have her baby soon, and Alice taught Emily how to help her during the birth. Arthur was in the infirmary during one of the lessons, and he and Merlin couldn’t help but laugh a little at the way Emily wrinkled her nose every time Alice said ‘vagina’, but she’d get that really focused and determined look on her face nonetheless. It was hilarious until Alice threw them out for being noisy fuckers (her words), and they found more enjoyable activities to do between Merlin’s sheets.

At this time of the day the council’s probably just sitting in the mess hall playing board games and gossiping as usual. Their meetings always end up in trivial arguments about how to make their beer better, or who was the best football player Way Back When.

There’s a fierce and brilliant sense of mine that fills him. It’s strange because he’s always kept himself on the sidelines, but somehow they’ve crept up on him, even the ones that are more hostile, that don’t trust him, or resent him and his family. Because they’re Ealdor and Ealdor’s home.

And then there’s Merlin, and how Arthur’s mind keeps doing circles around the thought of not finding him, of never seeing Merlin again, and how it refuses to even settle on such a thing. It’s a hot fire there in the corner of his brain that his thoughts refuse to touch—too dangerous, too painful. And that means something. It’s something linked to that feeling in his chest he keeps pushing down over and over again, especially in these past few months, especially when Merlin’s in his arms after they’ve fucked and he extricates himself and puts his clothes back on and Arthur just wants to reach for his arm and tug him back down over his chest. Or when it’s Arthur that has to go and he can’t—can’t—look at Merlin and the wide expanse of his skin in the bed, all rumpled hair and dark bruises against his collarbones where Arthur’s mouth was only moments before.

It’s too big and wild to consider right now. Not when the sun has finally gone down and night has fallen, and it’s dark enough for Arthur to creep out of his hiding spot and slowly make his way through the valley.

It’s a good thing that the night’s cloudy: the dragons won’t see him as easily. But it’s also inconvenient since he can’t see shit.

He uses a little pocket light that some of the Magicals had devised one winter when their generator died for a few days and the whole of Ealdor had been plunged into darkness. It’s a sort of mini flashlight that runs on magic instead of batteries. It’s not too bright, more like a candle flame than a real flashlight beam would be—yellow and soft, but not warm.

Arthur keeps it in his palm, checks the ground to see if he’s still on Merlin’s tracks, closes it, then walks for a bit and repeats. It’s a slow but steady process.

Only once does he hear the sound of wings overhead. He flattens himself to the ground and stays as unmoving as he can. His breathing is too loud to his ears and he tries to muffle it against his arm. The night is cold and his coat is stiff against his lips.

The dragon passes over him without slowing down and Arthur doesn’t know if it’s because the dragon’s not hunting—they don’t usually hunt at night, but it’s not unheard of—or if Freya’s protection spell is really working wonders on his camouflage, but he’s grateful for any of it. He waits a long time after he can’t hear, or smell, the dragon anymore before resuming his tracking.

Once he gets to the other side of the valley, he takes a moment to sit down and eat some dry meat. Looking around him all he sees are vague shapes of rocky outcroppings and the dark looming bulk of the mountain.

From here, he’s not sure what to do. It’s impossible to see Merlin’s tracks in the dark, and that’s if there are any, considering the ground is far rockier than before.

He should probably wait until morning.

Just as he’s about to settle in for the night in a hollow between two boulders, he sees a faint light flicker from the corner of his eye. He turns sharply and stares into the darkness. He waits, and waits, until it happens again, and he smiles.

Merlin.

Who else would be around here? It could be bandits, but Arthur’s willing to take a chance. He takes a deep breath through his nose to make sure the air doesn’t smell of sulphur than it usual, takes a moment to make sure he can’t hear the powerful flapping of wings in the distance, and satisfied with the relatively clear smell and quietness of the night, he lights his magical flashlight and holds it in his mouth to help him see where’s he’s going.

It’s not too much of a steep climb. Sometimes Arthur waits to see the light flicker again, making sure he’s on the right path. He’s climbing the hillside toward a steeper part of the rock surface with enough rocks stuck in the ground to help him push himself without letting his feet slide in the muddy ground in between.

He has to go around some large rocks, changing the angle at which he’s going, and he loses track of the light, so he continues in the general direction he saw it last and hopes he doesn’t go too far off-track.

The sound of his panting around the light in his mouth is almost deafening in the silence. Surely Merlin must have heard him. Arthur leans against a rock to catch his breath. He’s close, he thinks. There’s a sort of outcropping just to his left with what seems to be a fairly flat surface right against the almost vertical rock wall that’d make a great place to lie down.

When he gets there he can definitely see the shape of someone sitting against the wall, head bent, right beside a black hole in the wall that Arthur assumes is a small cave.

Arthur holds his breath for a moment until a light appears between the person’s hand, small and golden, taking different shapes—dragons, horses, flowers—casting shadows around a nose, full parted lips, and cheekbones that Arthur knows so well.

He steps on the rock and lets himself fall with a groan. “Nice little place you’ve got here, Merlin. Add some lacy curtains and flowery wallpaper and you’ll have a cozy little house just for yourself.”

Merlin startles, and the light in his hand changes into a ball of magic faster than Arthur can blink. Merlin closes his fingers around it quickly.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Arthur!”

“Glad to see you too, old pal. Long time no see.”

Merlin says nothing and sags against the rock wall behind him.

“When was the last time, again?” Arthur continues. “Oh yes, I remember. We’d just fucked, you riding my cock, telling me how good I am—not that I blame you—and then falling asleep, sticky, but satisfied. Good times?”

Merlin says nothing, and Arthur stretches his legs in front of him, getting a bit closer so he can see him better, settling his little light between them.

“What I wasn’t expecting was for Gaius to wake me up while I was naked—think about that for a moment, let that sink in—to tell me that my idiot—my—that you had left during the night, with not so much as a by your leave except for a little letter that said nothing useful. Then I had to make all kinds of promises to your mother that I’d bring you back.”

“I’m sorr—”

“Percival threatened me. I camped out in stinky mud for hours. Could have been eaten by dragons. Mithian got sentimental. ”

“I”m really sorry, but—”

“You made your mother cry, Merlin. Your mother.”

Arthur was trying to keep himself under control, but all the anger he had pushed away on his way here, that had festered at the back of his mind, wanted to be let out. He curled his hands into fists.

“Did you think I wouldn’t come after you?” It’s sharp and hurts, but he doesn’t care. “Did you really think you could just leave? Just like that? That it wouldn’t matter?”

Merlin rubs his face with his hands. “I had to. I had—I couldn’t stay Arthur. I have to figure this out. I—”

“You could have figured it out in Ealdor, Merlin. You didn’t—You don’t have to leave.”

“No, I can’t—I... It’s too dangerous. What if I become… What if—” Merlin takes a shuddery breath. “They’re so scared of me, Arthur.”

His voice is hoarse, and it breaks at the end. It rips at Arthur’s anger until it’s only smoldering embers inside of him. Before he knows it, he’s crouching in front of Merlin, taking his hand off his face so they can look at each other, close enough to to see Merlin’s eyes, to feel his breath on his face.

“I’m not scared of you,” he says.

Merlin lets out a sigh and leans forward so his forehead touches Arthur’s.

“When was the last time you properly slept?” Arthur says, rubbing his thumb under Merlin’s eye.

“Dunno.” His mumbled breath is moist against Arthur’s jaw.

“Right. We’ll talk tomorrow. For now, sleep.”

He helps Merlin to his feet and all but drags him to the little cave. He unbuckles his pack and guns from his back and legs, and digs around in his bag for an extra shirt to use as some kind of pillow.

“We’re filthy,” he says, taking off his coat that’s stiff with mud. “Can you make it so it’s not as cold?”

Merlin nods numbly, and a second later his eyes flash gold. For a quick moment there’s a sort of golden barrier that appears over the entrance to the little cave before fading away, but it’s now noticeably warmer in their little space, as warm as it is in Ealdor, or on a hot and humid summer night.

Arthur dresses down to his t-shirt and pants, laying some of his cleaner layers on the rocky floor to lie on, before helping Merlin do the same. They shift around a bit until they’re comfortable enough and Arthur can press the tip of his nose against the back of Merlin’s neck and breathe in his smell.

Merlin’s twitchy in his arms. The night’s quiet, and Arthur spreads his hand on Merlin’s chest, taking deep breaths, making sure Merlin can feel the rise and fall of Arthur’s chest against his back, until Merlin’s own breathing matches his.

They don’t talk, but Arthur knows Merlin’s not asleep, so he waits. It’s an odd sort of quiet, loaded and heavy, but still sort of comfortable in a way, and Arthur’s not sure why that is until he realises it’s because he’s deeply familiar with it. It’s the sort of quiet that comes from Merlin when he wants to say something but doesn’t know how, or worries how it’ll be taken, and it’s the sort of quiet that Arthur doesn’t feel like filling, but is willing to wait for Merlin to say whatever he has to say.

“I’m sorry,” Merlin says, interrupting Arthur’s thoughts. He moves within the embrace until he’s on his back, and Arthur can only see the faint outline of his nose and mouth and ear.

“I don’t know what happened with the dragon that day,” he says, barely a whisper. “Gaius says that I might have been fighting against my powers, but I don’t know. There was just this pain in my chest and it burned, and I could hear the dragon in a way. Well, not really in words, but I knew him in a way, and I wanted to tell him to go away, but everything burned and I couldn’t find the words, even though it felt like I knew the words. And, I don’t know. Everything was so muddled. I was so scared we’d get killed.” He turns to face Arthur. “I threw away your gun, Arthur. I—We could have died, because of me, because I couldn’t—”

Merlin takes a shaky breath, turning back, and Arthur bites the inside of his cheek to keep silent.

“I know they were scared of me,” Merlin whispers, “in Ealdor. And yeah, it hurt. But the truth is—The truth is I’m terrified they’re right.”

“They’re not,” Arthur says, pushing his fingers lightly against Merlin’s jaw.

“You can’t know that.”

“And yet, I do.”

Arthur waits to see if Merlin has more to say, but Merlin stays silent.

“Come back with me and we’ll figure it out. I’ll help you I promise,” he says, trying to find the right words to make Merlin understand. He has no idea how he’d be able to help Merlin, seeing as he knows nothing about magic, but he also knows—in an uncomfortable way that makes him shift and shuffle—that an Ealdor without Merlin would be… Well, it’d be wrong.

Merlin stays quiet, and Arthur leans his forehead on his shoulder.

“You can’t run away, Merlin. I... You—You can’t.”

Merlin snorts. “You’re one to talk, Arthur Pendragon.”

“Don’t make this about me. You always make it about me so you don’t have to talk about yourself. Took me a while to realise but I’m onto you now.”

Arthur feels the muscles of Merlin’s jaw clench under his fingers.

“Well,” he says, getting closer so he can kiss Merlin’s jaw, “what were you trying to accomplish by coming here, exactly?”

Merlin sighs and turns on his side so he’s facing Arthur. “I just wanted to... I don’t know. I thought that being face-to-face with a dragon would force me to use my powers.” His fingers find Arthur’s chest in the dark, going up until they rest lightly against the side of Arthur’s neck.

“Yes, because that worked so well last time.”

“I wasn’t prepared though. I didn’t know.” Arthur drags his fingers along Merlin’s jaw and pulls at his earlobe. He smiles when he sees the vague outline of Merlin’s scowl he knew that would elicit.

“How did you cross the valley without getting attacked?” he asks.

“I only saw one dragon,” Merlin says. “Big. Red. Pretty fucking scary, too.”

“Yeah, I saw it too. Didn’t seem to be on the lookout for food though.”

“No, I think it’s the only reason it didn’t attack me. Then I reached this place. It seemed like a nice place to stay.”

“Yes, very cozy.”

“I’m thinking on adding a picket fence outside to go with my gardenias,” Merlin says. Arthur snakes an arm around his waist and draws him closer.

“It’ll go so well with the lacy curtains and wallpaper,” Arthur says.

“I’d offer you some tea, but I ran out of sugar. I’ll have to pop by the neighbour’s tomorrow to borrow some.”

“I’m sure they won’t mind, agreeable fellows that they are.”

Merlin lets out a small giggle that heats Arthur’s insides, and he tightens his hold on Merlin.

He slowly slips a thigh between Merlin’s legs, pushing upward to rub at his groin. Merlin laughs, and the sound is too loud in the quietness of the night, but it’s all Arthur wanted to hear.

“Really, Arthur? Now?”

Arthur only hums and nuzzles along Merlin’s jaw, then sighs. “Not really, I just—“

He pushes again, trying to get closer, hating the layers of clothing between them. It’s a bit overwhelming really, the way he suddenly can’t seem to be able to let go of Merlin, and how, no matter how much he tries, it doesn’t feel close enough.

“You scared the shit out of me,” he whispers into Merlin’s neck, where it’s warm and familiar, and he can feel the pulse of his heart against his lips. He grabs at the back of his shirt to bring him closer.

“I’m sorry,” Merlin says, fingers threading into Arthur’s hair, holding him close.

Arthur wakes up before Merlin. The light is pale and grey, and the air smells like rain. Merlin’s head’s resting on Arthur’s elbow and he can’t feel his arm, but he doesn’t want to move. Not yet.

Arthur brushes hair off Merlin’s forehead. Merlin’s right hand is tucked under his chin and Arthur passes his thumb over the bruises on Merlin’s knuckles, instinctively moving his jaw to feel the tightness of the skin where Merlin punched him.

He understands more about what Merlin constantly tries to tell him than he lets on: he’s not an idiot. He knows there are a few things that he needs to let go of, but Arthur’s never been good at letting go. Of anything. You’d think he would be, what with the world changing so much in the past decade, all the people he’s lost, the dreams, the possibilities.

He was in the army, he’s seen people die, monuments crumble, plans fall through. He saw whole forests burn, the skies lit red in the night from all the fires. And yet. And still. There’s something that burns deep inside of him, consuming and relentless that he can’t quite smother. It seizes at his veins when he wakes up sweaty in the middle of the night, black dreams full of monsters still behind his eyelids. He doesn’t know how to be like some of the people in Ealdor, moving from one moment to the next, seemingly at peace with the knowledge that they can lose anything and having accepted that fact, going through their lives cool and collected and calm. He doesn't know if he can reach that level of detachment, but sometimes he wishes he could.

“Shut up,” Merlin mumbles, shuffling closer to Arthur.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your brain’s so fucking loud, I’m sure the whole of Ealdor is awake and on their way here to beg you to shut it for five seconds.”

“God I hope not. They’d have to see your pasty white arse and that might traumatise the children. Think of the children, Merlin.”

Merlin raises his head and bites lightly on Arthur’s chin. “Arse.”

“Yes, your arse Merlin, and how we have to protect the children from it. Do keep up, would you?” Arthur says, smiling against Merlin’s hair.

Merlin’s fingers crawl their way to Arthur’s nape and twist at his hair. Hard. Arthur yelps and rubs at it, unable not to laugh.

“I meant arsehole,” Merlin says, his voice still full of sleep.

“Yes, well, I know you like them Merlin, but again, I beg of you to think of the children.”

“I hate you and your goddamn morning chirpiness. Stop that right now, or I’ll have to ask you to leave my bed... cave.”

“You’d throw me out? Just like that? Without the benefit of a morning blowjob?”

“Those are the rules, I’m afraid.”

“Harsh, Merlin.”

Merlin giggles and rubs his nose against Arthur’s throat. Arthur would tease him a little for it, but then again he’s become rather fond of it too. God he’s getting sappy.

“Ugh, so thirsty,” Merlin says and stretches out his arm to catch the gourd of water that comes floating into his hand from the top of their bags.

Arthur stares a little. He’s seen his share of magic, it’s not like it’s a new thing, but to be honest he’s never been this close to such innocuously small and sort of domestic use of it before. Not until recently, when this thing with Merlin became... well, whatever it is now.

He’s seen some Magicals fight dragons with great spells that flew red and golden and bright just like dragon’s fire. He’s seen some enchant weapons and bullets and arrows, their eyes flashing gold like the soft substance they create to dip the weapons in.

Since he’s been in Ealdor, he’s seen it used for other things too: to stretch the capabilities of a radio, to make clocks work without batteries, to clean water, to help plants grow. He’s seen it used in a thousand different ways that made their lives better and safer. But always somehow with a purpose, a focus—practical.

“Did you start doing more magic around me?” he asks as Merlin sits up to drink. “Like for small things? Not just your work in the armoury or, you know...” Arthur waves his hand around.

Merlin smiles a little. “Still so unable to talk about it?”

“More like I’m not sure how.” Merlin just looks at him and Arthur sighs. “I don’t know, you seem to be doing more casual magic around me and I was just wondering, is all.”

“Casual magic?”

“Yeah, you know, like getting that water, or how you unlaced your boots yesterday, or switch the light on... Casual, you know?”

Merlin looks pensive for a moment, and Arthur can’t help but reach and rub his thumb across the crease of his elbow, making Merlin shiver until he bats his hand away.

“Maybe you just started to look,” he says finally.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t think you were ever paying attention before.”

“You’re sure you’re not just feeling more comfortable around me with time, or something?”

Merlin sighs and lets himself fall back down beside Arthur, half-draped over him in the small space of the cave. Arthur shifts a little to accommodate him more.

“I never felt uncomfortable doing magic around you Arthur. I did think you were uncomfortable seeing magic, and maybe I unconsciously didn’t use it as much around you. I don’t know.”

“You were never uncomfortable?”

Merlin raises himself on one arm and pushes Arthur’s hair away from his forehead with his fingers.

“You arrived in Ealdor, dirty and bloody, Mithian and Percy in tow, and when we asked you your name you said ‘I’m Arthur Pendragon’. Honestly Arthur, you could have made up any name. Most of us didn’t remember what you looked like, even less with all the grit and whatnot. But no, you had to be stupidly honest, and I thought, ‘well if he’s that much of an idiot surely there’s nothing to worry about.’”

Arthur snorts. “Thanks.”

“I did like that about you, though,” Merlin says, soft and close to Arthur’s skin.

“You just couldn’t wait to get into my pants. Admit it,” Arthur says, needing to diffuse the weight of Merlin’s words inside of him and the way they make his bones tremble.

“I admit that the rugged soldier look totally did it for me.”

“I knew it.”

Arthur sits up and takes the gourd from Merlin, while Merlin digs in his bag for some food. Arthur watches him for a moment, wiping the water off his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Did Gaius say anything else? About your powers?”

Merlin doesn’t answer right away. He leans back on his heels and passes a hand over his face.

“You know,” he says, staring at the landscape outside, “he didn’t know how or why I suddenly got them. I mean, obviously there was always something there, but...”

On Arthur’s first hunt, only a few weeks after arriving in Ealdor, he’d asked if Merlin was coming with them. He’d assumed that a three times Sealed Magical, even with an intact Seal, would have some dragon fighting abilities. After all, no one had ever heard of someone powerful enough to require three Seals before Merlin. He’d been told that no, Merlin’s magic tended to go haywire around dragons. Arthur had shrugged it off. Merlin wasn’t the first Magical he’d met to have this problem.

Now, he wondered if this was a sign of Lord potential. If all those Magicals had or still have the possibility in them to become Dragonlords.

“Gaius didn’t know what suddenly made it… appear. Like it suddenly unlocked itself from inside of me,” Merlin says, hand on his chest as if the source of all his power was there, throbbing under the surface, and Arthur has the weird impulse to close his fingers around Merlin’s and see if he can feel it too. He clenches the discarded clothing under him instead. “He said, that nobody knew exactly what made a Lord, and what didn’t. Is it random like any other kind of magic? Is it hereditary? Is it something that was always there but we didn’t know because every Magical had their magic Sealed? Or is it something that appeared after the dragons came? Nothing. Maybe they know in the Cities now, maybe they know more there, but…” Merlin shrugs. He turns to look at Arthur and there’s such apprehension and fear etched on his face, Arthur has never seen Merlin so uncertain.

“Arthur, we know nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

Arthur reaches out and grabs the hem of Merlin’s shirt, pulling him forward until Merlin’s facing him.

“We’ll figure it out once we get back to Ealdor, I promise,” he says to Merlin as he gets dressed and starts gathering their things. Merlin, on the other hand, only starts unpacking his bag.

“Merlin?”

Merlin doesn’t look up, just digs in his bag, until he pulls an apple from the bottom, and Arthur almost rolls his eyes because of course Merlin would pack all wrong.

“I… don’t know Arthur. I don’t know if I can… What if—”

“You can’t run away,” Arthur says, starting to get annoyed, and more than a bit exasperated.

Merlin raises his eyebrows and looks at him. “Oh, that’s rich coming from you.” Arthur bristles at the anger in his voice.

“I don’t run away.”

“You run away all the time,” Merlin exclaims, standing up so he can look at Arthur properly, like he always does when they fight. “You’ve been running away since the first day you got to Ealdor. Just because you’re not going anywhere, doesn’t mean you’re not doing it.”

Arthur clenches his jaw, and crosses his arms over his chest.

“You’re so convinced that—Fuck, I don’t even know. That you don’t deserve respect, or family, or a home, or… or, love, and you hide away behind excuses and guilt and—“

“Is that what you think?” Arthur says.

“It’s not what I think,” Merlin says. “It’s the truth.”

Arthur nods his head stiffly. He doesn’t trust his voice right now, so he just gathers the rest of their things, shoving Merlin’s back in his bag.

“Some things need to be earned, Merlin,” he says through clenched teeth. “Some things need to be atoned for.”

Merlin throws his hands in the air. “Fine, atonement. I get it. But you don’t get to decide how other people feel about you Arthur. You don’t get to decide when they’re allowed to respect you or like you or need you or… or love you.”

Arthur stops and looks at Merlin for a moment, all shifting feet and red ears, but defiant eyes. Mithian’s words come to his mind, and he hates it, hates this feeling that begs to be let out, to unfurl and burn inside of him. Arthur doesn’t want it to let it out, doesn’t want to know what it is, or how it would feel to let it free, to see what would happen.

“But you get to decide to leave everything and everyone on a whim,” Arthur says instead, shoving Merlin’s bag at him, and he catches it reflexively.

“Yes,” Merlin says.

“Without thinking what that would do to the people that care for you? How worried and hurt they would be?”

“I was thinking of them when I left. That’s why I left,” Merlin says.

“You keep telling yourself that, Merlin. You left because you were scared, and you didn’t want us to hate you, except you never gave us any chance to decide on our own. You just assumed.”

“Well, now you know how it fucking feels.”

“Well, so do you!”

Arthur takes a deep breath and tries to calm himself. The silence is heavy between them, only filled by the sound of their loud breathing. Arthur looks at Merlin, all pale with dark bruises under his eyes, sort of soft-edged and fragile in the grey morning light, and he realises that the way he clenches his jaw and fists his hands and pinches his lips is not only out of anger but because he’s hurt. And Arthur’s tired. He’s so very tired of this fight.

“It’s about legacy,” he says, running a hand through his hair.. “It’s—Growing up I was taught over and over about the Pendragon legacy. My father would tell me stories about my ancestors. There were portraits of them all over the hallways of Pendragon Manor and at the offices as well. I was named for my great-grandfather. Everything, absolutely everything was about the family name and what it represented.”

“But that doesn’t matter, Arthur. Not anymore.”

“But it does Merlin, can’t you see? All my life, since I can remember, I was told of how grand my family is. How important. I was taught how to honor it. I was told over and over that one day I’d take over Pendragon Industries. I wanted to make my father proud of me. Back then, my greatest fear was to disappoint him, to fail him and, at the same time, our whole family.”

Arthur rubs his face with his hands.

“Merlin, I was even proud to be part of something so big, something that was considered great, and worthy. I can’t deny all of that because I realized how wrong it was. I can’t erase a lifetime of pride, of history, just because suddenly this history proves to be less glorious than I thought it was. I can’t pretend I’m not part of it, was always a part of it, because now it’s bad, and fucking ugly. It doesn’t work like that.”

Merlin reaches out to fiddle with the bottom of Arthur’s coat. “You were just a kid, Arthur.”

“Two summers before the Invasion I was an intern for my dad. Merlin, there are files out there that sends Magicals like you to places like Ealdor and they have my signature on them.” Merlin’s hand pulls away from his skin and Arthur thinks he might cry. “I didn’t question it. I even thought it was right. I was nineteen, Merlin. That’s hardly a kid.”

“Arthur—”

“I remember once. My father took me to see the Sealing of some newborns. One of the women that came out of the operation room with her baby in her arms saw us. She walked up to my father, tears in her eyes, and thanked him. She fucking thanked him for helping her child. As if there was something wrong with it. My father took her hands between his and let her babble her gratitude, and I looked at them and was proud to be able to do some good, do something right.”

The memory hurts Arthur more than he’s willing to let on, and the shame burns deep and red under his skin. He doesn’t look at Merlin, doesn’t want to see the anger there, or worse, the disgust.

He startles a little when arms wrap themselves around his waist and soft lips kiss his jaw.

“I’m not as innocent as you like to think I am,” Arthur says, softly, and when Merlin pulls back to look at him, the hurt in his eyes is like a second punch to Arthur’s face. But Merlin shakes his head sharply.

“I’m not angry at you.”

“Merlin—”

“I’m not angry at you, and I don’t hate you,” he says. “It was another world, and another time, and these things don’t matter to me. I don’t care about the Arthur back then. I care about the one I know now.”

“I can’t really do that, I’m afraid,” Arthur says with a bitter laugh.

Merlin gives him a small smile. “Well, you are an idiot, after all. One wouldn’t expect you to.” He hugs Arthur again. “Thank you for telling me.”

Arthur hugs him back for a moment, though he still feels empty and angry and hollowed out.

“You’re too forgiving,” he says, lips on Merlin’s neck.

“Maybe you should learn from me, you freakishly noble arsehole.”

Arthur snorts. “Jesus, I’m not that stupid.”

Merlin punches his shoulder with a small smile.

Arthur clears his throat and shoulders his bag. “We’re going back home. I don’t care if I have to drag you there screaming with one hand, and fighting off the dragons you’ll undoubtedly attract with the other.”

Behind him he hears a small gasp, and he turns to see Merlin looking at him with wide, awed eyes.

“What—“

“You said it,” Merlin says, voice soft.

“The fuck you’re—“

“You said home. Not just ‘Ealdor’ or ‘your home, Merlin’ like you always do. You said it like it was yours, too.”

“Well, yeah. I mean—“

“I’ve been trying to make you understand for years,” Merlin says, and Arthur can only stare at the pure happiness that’s starting to etch itself around Merlin’s eyes, his lips, into his voice. Arthur’s a bit transfixed by it.

“Say it again, please. Just—Fuck—Just, please?”

Arthur’s first instinct is to back off. The moment feels fragile and precious and important in a way that he doesn’t want to deal with, but instead he finds himself taking a step toward Merlin, fingers curling into his coat’s collar, fixing it, and leaning forward until his forehead’s against Merlin’s. His fingers clench into the fabric and Merlin’s hands are on his wrists.

“Let’s go home, Merlin,” Arthur says, quiet in the space between them, eyes clenched shut. “Our home. They need us. They need you.”

He pulls away to see Merlin smiling at him, completely unguarded, and Arthur’s never seen that smile before. He decides that it’s his, only his, and for that he swallows past all the ugly things that want to crawl out of him, all his impulses to deny everything and go back behind the familiar and safe barriers he’s been carrying for years.

“Arthur, what if—“

“I won’t let it happen,” Arthur says. “I won’t. I promise. I won’t let you become like all the other Lords. It’s not gonna happen.”

Merlin gives him an uncertain look. Arthur curls his fingers tighter into Merlin’s coat to refrain from shaking him.

“Besides,” he says, “Melody would be so sad if you stopped practicing magic with her. And Old Charlie wouldn’t have anybody to beat him at chess. Think how insufferable he’ll be. And no other Magical can keep the generator going the way you can. What happens the next time it dies? Do you want us to live without electricity and in the dark forever? Is that what you want?”

Merlin rolls his eyes. “I was going to come back, you know? It wasn’t a forever thing.”

“Only if you didn’t get yourself eaten,” Arthur says. “I don’t know if you’re aware, Merlin, but there are dragons out there.”

“Oh really? No, Arthur, it had completely escaped my notice.”

“You made your mother cry.”

Merlin pulls away and points at him. “That’s low, mate.”

“She cried, Merlin,” Arthur says. “Big, fat, tears on my shoulder. Said ‘Bring him back, Arthur. Please, I beg of you. Bring back my idiot son to me.’ It was heartbreaking.”

“Don’t push it, Pendragon,” Merlin says. “My mother doesn’t cry like that, and she doesn’t beg.”

“Think of poor old Gaius. Think what worrying about you will do to his health.”

“I hate you.”

“Let’s just go. Maybe we can find you a dragon on the way to practice on,” Arthur says, pulling at Merlin’s arm. “Whatever did you do yesterday? You only came across the one dragon?”

“I saw two others,” Merlin says, following Arthur down the rocky path, sliding slightly on the pebbles, and Arthur has to bite down on the quip he wants to make about how easily Merlin’s swayed. “But I was already here, so I hid instead.”

“Brilliant, Mr. I-want-to-explore-my-powers. How did that go for you?”

“Oh shut up, it was an instinctive response.”

“Shouldn’t your instinctive response be to have a little chat with it instead? You always say that magic’s first and foremost instinctive. Aren’t you all pals now?”

“Do I look like I know what I’m doing?”

“Merlin, you never look like you know what you’re doing, even when you do. It’s very unnerving, especially when you’re elbow deep in the only generator in all of Ealdor.”

“Oh, ha ha. And you’re not even trying to be quiet right now.”

Arthur turns around and gives Merlin a wide smile. “Why? I have a Dragonlord with me. If a dragon comes, you just have to tell it to fuck off.”

“Your faith in me would be flattering if it wasn’t putting all the pressure on me, and could potentially get us killed.”

Arthur laughs. It’s loud and clear and echoes against the rocks. He almost instinctively hides behind a boulder and grabs his shotgun, just in case a dragon comes flying at the sound. But he wants Merlin to see that Arthur trusts him, believes in him, so he fights the impulse.

Merlin lets out a pained cry and Arthur whips around.

“What is it?”

Merlin shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says through clenched teeth. “I just—“ He groans and holds the side of his head.

“Dragon?”

Arthur takes out his shotgun this time and looks at the sky. He can’t hear the tell-tale flap of wings or the shrieking sounds dragons make when on the hunt.

“Yes,” Merlin says, frowning, turning his head like he’s listening to something. “It’s close by, but… I don’t know. It’s—She’s—Hunting. But she’s also hurting, and—Fuck I can’t—“

Arthur puts a hand on the side of Merlin’s neck. Merlin’s head is bent, but he’s standing uphill from him, so it’s easy for Arthur to look at his face twisted in pain.

“Breathe,” Arthur says. “Breathe and focus. Come on. It’s natural, right? Instinctive. A part of you. Like your magic.”

Merlin nods and takes a deep breath. Then another.

“Don’t fight it,” Arthur whispers.

It takes only a moment for Merlin to raise his eyes to his, panicked and urgent.

“Shit. We have to go.” He starts running back up the hill.

“Merlin, what—“

“She’s on the other side of the ridge,” Merlin says over his shoulder.

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

Merlin stops and turns toward him. “Not when she’s about to eat some humans,” he says, before starting to run again.

“Shit.”

Arthur runs after him. He’s far more in shape than Merlin and he quickly catches up to him, mostly because Merlin keeps sliding through the pebbles. Arthur grabs his coat and pulls him over the side, where they can climb over bigger rocks with better footholds.

“They have Magicals with them, I think,” Merlin says. “She seems very frustrated about not being able to reach them with her fire.”

“They must be using some shields.” Arthur turns around to help Merlin up.

They move past the cave they slept in, and up to the left, where there’s earth and sparse grass between the rocks, allowing them to push up against the boulders.

When they finally reach the top, Arthur looks down into a small ravine between the rocky hill they just climbed and the mountain that stands in front of them. There he sees a small blue dragon, long and snake-like. It spits fire at the side of the mountain where the magical shields shimmer gold and silver when the flames hit them. The dragon moves to the side, and Arthur can see a series of small caves and a few people standing there. There seems to be at least two Magicals, but Arthur has fought enough dragons in his life, has seen enough shields to know that the two Magicals will get tired before the dragon does.

“They’re not fighting,” Arthur says to Merlin as he drops on his stomach beside Arthur. “They’re not gonna last.”

Merlin’s out of breath and wincing like he has a headache and the sun’s too bright. “She knows that too,” he says.

Arthur grips his arm. “You have to tell it to stop. To go away. To sleep. Anything. It’s too big for me to fight on my own. It’d just turn on us.”

“Arthur, I don’t know how,” Merlin says, pain in his voice.

“You have to or these people are going to die!”

Merlin grabs his head between his hands. “I just—I can’t—It doesn’t want to—“

“Merlin, you can’t let these people die.”

“I know!”

“Then do it!” Arthur says, shaking him.

Merlin’s head snaps up and out of his mouth come the strangest words Arthur has ever heard. Merlin’s voice is low and deep around them, and Arthur doesn’t understand any of it, but they feel old, ancient against his skin, like long forgotten languages carved on rock tablets and buried in ruined cities. It makes his skin crawl but he’s awed by it at the same time. Merlin’s eyes burn gold.

The dragon turns its head sharply toward them, its long neck almost coming parallel to its tail, before it twists its body to face them completely. It has stopped shrieking and spitting fire and, to Arthur, it almost looks like it’s entranced by them—by Merlin.

Merlin shouts a couple more words and the dragon’s off, flying high over their heads, as Merlin collapses on the ground. He’s breathing hard and his face is sweaty, but he looks fine. He turns his head and gives Arthur a small smile.

Arthur wipes Merlin’s wet fringe from his forehead. “Told you,” he says, and Merlin punches him lightly on the arm.

“Arse.”

Arthur gets up and helps Merlin to his feet. Looking down, there’s some people waving at them from the ledge in front of the caves and two of them crossing the small ravine towards them.

“Should we join them?” Merlin asks.

“Well… they could be bandits.”

“What if they aren’t? What if they’re just… lost.”

Arthur looks at him incredulously. “Lost. Here?”

“Well… Okay, maybe not lost, but… Hey, what if they’re rebels?”

“That’s just a rumour, Merlin.”

“Fuck, I don’t know, okay? I mean, what are they even doing here?”

“Maybe they ran away from home in hope of finding themselves.”

“Oh, very funny, dickbag. I hate you.”

Arthur laughs and looks sideways at Merlin’s flushed face. “How do you feel? Think you can fight them off a bit if they try to kill us?”

“I think so… “

“Very reassuring.”

Merlin rolls his eyes. “Let’s just see what they want.”

They follow down a small rocky path. Merlin leans on Arthur, making the descent more difficult and unsteady.

“Don’t tell them anything about Ealdor,” Arthur says. “We don’t know if we can trust them.”

“Please, I’m not that stupid,” Merlin’s feet skid a little on the rocks, and Arthur grabs his elbow tighter to steady him.

Arthur looks around them. There are only rocks and dry vegetation around. He has no idea why these people are here. It’s weird. Even if they were bandits it wouldn’t make much sense. There aren’t any easily accessible food sources, and while the caves might give protection against the elements, and probably some dragons, it’s also very clear that these people aren’t equipped to fight any attacks. He doesn’t understand how they got here or even why.

They meet up with the two men at the bottom of the ravine.

“Hi,” the tallest of the two says, extending his hand. He’s older than Merlin and Arthur, with short cropped dark hair. His clothes and those of the man—boy—with him are old and dusty. They definitely look roughed up. “I’m Lancelot. And this is Daegal.”

Arthur shakes his hand, keeps the other on Merlin to steady him. “Arthur. And Merlin.”

“You just saved our lives,” Lancelot says. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, well…”

“You should come with us, you look exhausted,” Lancelot says with a warm smile and a look at Merlin. “We have food and shelter.”

Arthur hesitates for a moment. Lancelot looks sincere enough, and Daegal seems pretty unthreatening all right, sort of small and quiet, but he doesn’t know them. And he doesn’t know how many people there are with them back at the caves.

Lancelot must see his hesitation. “We’re not bandits, I swear. We’re refugees. We owe you our lives. Please, let us help you.”

Arthur takes a deep breath. Merlin is very tired, he can sense it. And they could easily make it back to their own cave on the other side of the hill before nightfall, but a part of him, while still wary of these people, is also curious. If what Lancelot’s saying is true, then maybe they can help these people now that they’re here. They’re not even surprised that Merlin’s a Lord It’s like they’ve seen one before, so there’s very little chance they’re from the Free Villages, or at least the ones further north. They must come from the South. They might even be from the Cities. They could really use some of the information they might have.

Arthur squeezes Merlin’s elbow in a silent question and waits for Merlin’s answering squeeze on his upper arm before nodding.

“Alright.”

“If you try anything funny,” Merlin says. “I’m calling back the bloody dragon.”

Lancelot laughs. It’s warm and genuine and Arthur can already feel himself relaxing and trusting him. Not enough to let his guard down, though. He’s met people like that before: charming and fascinating until they stab you in the back.

“Fair enough.”

Daegal comes on the other side of Merlin. “You okay?” he asks, looking at Merlin with awe.

“Yeah, thanks. I’m good,” Merlin says.

It takes them a long time to reach the caves. The climb is difficult on Merlin. His breathing gets heavier and heavier, and he starts having dizzy moments where he has to clutch at Arthur’s arm so as to not fall back. Arthur’s worried, but Merlin insists that he’s just very tired.

“I think it’s the magic,” Merlin says between two shallow breaths. “It was too much. It exhausted me.”

Arthur tightens his arm around Merlin’s waist, taking more of his weight.

“We’re almost there,” Lancelot says, looking worried as well.

When they finally get to the caves, Merlins sits down heavily beside a fire and leans against a wall, closing his eyes. Arthur stands in front of him. There are only five other people here besides Lancelot and Daegal.

“Arthur,” Lancelot says. “This is Aulfric and his daughter Sophia. Margaret, Jonas, and Oliver. Everyone this is Arthur and Merlin.”

“That the Dragonlord?” Margaret, a middle-aged woman with sharp cheekbones and bright blue eyes, says pointing to Merlin with her chin.

“That’s me,” Merlin says, raising his arm feebly. “No funny business or I’m calling her back.”

“Yes. I think they get it, Merlin,” Arthur says, pushing his leg lightly with his boot, before looking at them all in turn, trying to assess if any of them would be dangerous. “How did you know—“

“That he was a Lord?” Margaret says, and Arthur nods. “Boy, no one else could make a dragon just fly away like that. It’s not like we were scaring him off ourselves.”

Arthur sits beside Merlin once they’re done thanking them, keeping his shotgun and bags close by. Merlin leans his head on Arthur’s shoulder, but he doesn’t sleep. It’s dark, even by the mouth of the cave since the sun doesn’t reach completely into the ravine, but they have a couple of magical fires going, low, but warm and not producing any smoke.

Lancelot sits in front of them and hands them a bowl of food as Arthur nudges Merlin so he can sit up and eat.

“Not really hungry,” Merlin mumbles.

“Fuck that,” Arthur says. “You have to eat. We’ve barely had anything this morning, and I’m not having you slipping into some kind of magical coma like last time.”

“Fine, fine,” Merlins says, taking the bowl from Lancelot with slightly shaky hands and a soft thank you.

“So,” Arthur says after a few bites in silence. “If you don’t mind me asking, how the hell did you all end up here and how aren’t you dead yet?”

He doesn’t mean to sound suspicious or on edge, but it doesn’t seem to phase Lancelot at all. “Like I said, we’re refugees. We’re making our way north. There are some people there who are said to be able to get us across the sea.”

Arthur ponders this for a moment. They probably won’t give any information away that easily, seeing as they don’t know Merlin and Arthur, and there’s no way Arthur’s letting on about Ealdor in case they’re not what they say they are. The thing is, though, they’re all in a remote place where no one in their right mind should be. Lancelot and his group did almost just get killed, so they’re probably not some sort of spy from the South (and if they are, then they’re so rubbish at it, Arthur could just walk away with Merlin and leave them here to the dragons and bandits). So it’s actually quite possible that they are what they say they are. At the very least they aren’t with any Lord, but they must be from the South.

“Look,” Arthur says. “We can talk in circles for a while here, but I doubt any of us want that. It’s clear to me you’re from the South, and—“

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, none of you even bat an eyelash at Merlin being a Lord, for one. It’s clear you’ve seen one before, and let’s face it, there aren’t that many of them in the North. We’ve been traveling for long enough to know that.”

“It’s true,” Lancelot says, “some of us are actually from the Cities originally, though we’re far from home now. We just want to get to the northern shore and—“

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Lancelot, just tell them,” Margaret says, exasperated.

“Margaret…”

“What? What is it?” Merlin asks, standing straighter.

“Margaret’s right,” Jonas says. “We’re in a tight spot Lance. We need their help or we’ll never get out.”

“Idiots,” Aulfric says. “It’s the kind of help we could have asked for without divulging everything.” He turns to Lancelot. “This is what happens, Mr. Du Lac, when you amass strays with you that know nothing of secrets and causes and how to keep silent.”

“Daddy… You’re just telling them more yourself,” Sophia says, shaking her head and rolling her eyes.

Lancelot sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. He looks at Merlin and Arthur pensively for a moment. Arthur’s seen that look often enough. It’s the careful calculation of whether or not a risk is worth taking. So he pushes a little.

“What cause?” he asks.

Lancelot lowers his hand. “You don’t know?”

“We haven’t been in the Cities for years,” Merlin says around a mouthful. “Didn’t want to get used, you know?” Arthur has to bend down over his bowl to hide his surprise at Merlin’s skillful lie. Merlin’s never been a good liar.

Lancelot hums his agreement. “They’re always looking for new Lords. The Queen loves to train them, entices them with land and all that. Power.”

“Not interested,” Merlin says.

Arthur clears his throat.

“Right,” Lancelot says. “While some of us are indeed refugees.” He looks at Margaret, Jonas, and Oliver. “The rest of us are what you could call… Well, rebels, really.”

There’s a moment of silence. “So,” Merlin says almost more for Arthur’s benefit, “guess it wasn’t just a rumour after all, huh?” He laughs quietly.

“Merlin…”

“What’s so funny?” Lancelot asks.

“Arthur,” Merlin says chuckling. “They’re refugees too! They literally ran away from home. Ha! I was fucking right.”

Arthur bites the inside of his cheek, trying not to laugh. It wouldn’t do to give Merlin any satisfaction. He shakes his head at him, and turns back to Lancelot, who looks quite confused. Arthur just waves his hand.

“So, rebellion, huh?” he says.

Lancelot settles down more comfortably in front of them. “It’s been slow in the making, but it’s… It’s strong. There are a few Lords on our side, too. You’re not the only one who doesn’t want to be used by The Queen,”

As soon as Lancelot mentioned the other Lords, though, Merlin had stopped laughing and perked up. “Other Lords?” he says. “On your side? Against The Queen?”

“Yes,” Lancelot says. “Most of them still have to do what she wants, but they’re trying to recruit more to our side. It’s difficult, though, to know who you can and cannot trust. It takes time.”

“It’s dangerous,” Arthur says.

“But worth it,” Lancelot replies. “We cannot let this continue. The way they treat non-Magicals in the Cities, or anyone who doesn’t do what they want, doesn’t play by their rules… It’s—“ He sighs. “I know it wasn’t right Before either, but this isn’t the way. It has stopped being about retribution and it’s only about power and control. We were hoping to recruit some help in the Free Villages. It’s easier there to talk freely and not be afraid of spies. Magicals and non-Magicals live as equals there and that’s what we’re trying to do in the Cities, but…”

“But what?”

“They don’t want to fight,” Daegal says, his long boyish limbs stretched out in front of him, dark circles under his eyes.

Lancelot shakes his head. “The more north we went, the harder it became to convince people to join our cause. They don’t—They believe they’re safe. That they’ve found a place where they can build a new life, a new home after the horrors of the Invasion.”

Arthur exchanges a quick look with Merlin, but they say nothing.

“They’re wrong, though,” Margaret says. “They’re coming for them. They’re coming for them all.”

Arthur sees Merlin’s hands clench into fists at his sides and he bumps his shoulder lightly with his to offer him some kind of comfort even though his own heart just skipped a beat in dread. They need to go back to Ealdor.

“How did you survive all the way here, though?” Merlin asks.

Lancelot and Daegal look at each other, but Daegal just shrugs.

“We had a Lord with us,” he says. “He was never with The Queen and he accepted to come north with us. We’re escorting Aulfric and Sophia.”

“We refused to bow to their will,” Sophia says, chin high. “We refused, and they bound our magic. We’d just got it back and they took it away!”

She pushes her oversized, dirty coat from her shoulder to show her bare arm. Arthur almost gasps. Over her Seals there are angry-looking red lines crisscrossing like a complicated, pattern-less web. They shimmer under the light of the fire.

“We have powerful family over the sea,” Aulfric says. “They’ll unbind our magic. There will be retribution for such an act against us.” He straightens himself, standing as proud as his daughter. “We are the Sidhe of Avalon, and they shall be punished.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows at their imperious tone. He’s heard of the Sidhe, of course. They’re a powerful and old family from a tiny island off the coast in the south-east. Arthur had even read their files, once. His father had them under strict surveillance, convinced that they were pro-magic activists and terrorists.

“We’re hoping we can get support there through their connection,” Lancelot says, clearing his throat to diffuse the slightly tense atmosphere. “On the way we thought we’d try to garner support through the Free Villages. And here we are.”

“But—Where’s the Dragonlord?” Merlin asks. “Why didn’t he… she save you from that dragon?”

“He—He died… A few days ago,” Lancelot says. “And we were here without protection. We’ve been making our way through this ravine during the nights. The caves offer good shelter during the day, but you saw, it was only a matter of time before we got attacked. We were just… stuck.”

“Kilgharrah didn’t come back to help us,” Oliver says, his voice small and sad. He’s just a scrawny boy who doesn’t look a day over twelve.

“Who’s Kilgharrah?”

“Balinor’s dragon,” Margaret says. “He was our Dragonlord.”

“The Dragonlord had a dragon?” Merlin says, surprised.

Lancelot nods, frowning at them, and Arthur tries to not wince at Merlin’s slip. “When a Lord knows the name of a dragon,” Lancelot says, slowly, “The dragon becomes… his, in a way. He must listen to the Lord, of course, but the dragon also cannot be controlled or ordered about by other Lords. Kilgharrah and Balinor were friends, really. He was pretty nice actually, though rather cryptic.”

“The dragon was… nice.” Arthur’s head’s turning. Here’s something he thought he’d never hear. “He did leave you all here to die.” He feels like it’s important to point this fact out, somehow, but Lancelot just shrugs and picks up their empty bowls.

“He wasn’t bound to us. I don’t really understand the rules of dragons and Dragonlords or the bonds that form between them. I don’t think anyone else can.”

“Shouldn’t you know that, Dragonlord?” Sophia says, looking at Merlin with a calculating glare.

“I…” Merlin hesitates.

“It’s a fairly new development,” Arthur says. “And like Merlin said, we haven’t been in the Cities in a long time.”

Lancelot nods and passes their dirty bowls to Oliver, who immediately starts washing them with eyes glowing gold.

The rest of the day passes slowly and quietly. Arthur stays close to Merlin, who drifts in and out of sleep for a while, almost curling against Arthur’s side. He talks a bit with Lancelot, mostly asking questions about the Cities and what kind of strategies the Lords might have. It’s difficult to ask exactly what he wants without mentioning Ealdor or letting on how little he and Merlin actually know considering that they’re supposed to have been travelling throughout the North for the past few years. He thinks he could maybe trust Lancelot, but he’s not sure about the others and there’s no way to get Lancelot on his own without looking suspicious. In any case, Lancelot knows far less than Arthur thought he would about Sigan and other Lords. His primary mission is to escort Sophia and Aulfric, and as soon as they left the Cities it seems it got harder to communicate safely, especially once they reached the mountains.

When the sun begins to go down, Lancelot and the others start packing their things. It’s evident that they plan to travel at night, which is the best plan, and Arthur’s bracing himself for the inevitable question of whether or not he and Merlin will go with them. It’s obvious that’s what they want. Arthur caught Sophia and Aulfric talking to Lancelot earlier, eyeing Merlin and furiously whispering things Arthur couldn’t hear, but could easily guess at. It makes perfect sense that they’d like at least Merlin to come with them the way the other Dragonlord had.

Arthur’s frantically trying to come up with an excuse that doesn’t involve mentioning Ealdor. He’s still unsure why Lancelot had even been so forward with them in the first place, even considering Jonas and Margaret’s slip up. For someone who was all about secret rebellions, he’d talked about it fairly freely with strangers he didn’t know anything about.

Lancelot crouches beside Arthur, placing himself with his back to the rest of his group. Arthur shakes Merlin awake. They’d extinguished the magical fires a while back and it’s so dark Arthur has a hard time seeing Lancelot’s features until Oliver lights a small blue sphere in his hand. Lancelot speaks to them in a low voice.

“The others want you to come with us,” he says. “And I’ll admit that it would make things easier on us if you did, but I completely understand if you can’t. I don’t know what you’re doing in these mountains, but you must be in a hurry to go back to your village.”

He looks at them calmly.

Arthur sighs. “How did you know?”

“Call it an educated guess. I was planning to go to Ealdor with Balinor after making sure Aulfric, Sophia, and the others were safely on their way across the sea.”

Merlin gasps, but Lancelot only gives a small smile.

“It’s Ealdor, right? I was told by a reliable source that it was the closest village to these mountains. We would have gone there first, but Balinor insisted we finish this mission first. I know you have no reason to trust me, that’s why I told you what we were doing in the first place. We need all the people we can get.”

“We still don’t know if we can trust you,” Arthur says, making sure he’s not confirming anything Lancelot’s just said.

“No. That’s true. You should trust this though: Margaret’s right. They are coming for the Free Villages. You have to be prepared.”

Arthur thinks of Nemhain and the rumours of Sigan moving north. It’s probably only a matter of time before someone mentions Ealdor. He thinks of all the other Free Villages they haven’t heard of in a while and wonders if they fell prey to Lords as well. It doesn’t take much to take over a Free Village; most are small, secluded yes, but still mostly filled with civilians, not soldiers. Even the Magicals wouldn’t necessarily have the skills to fight unless a village managed, like Ealdor, to acquire a few ex-soldiers from the Coalition. Even then, all it would take is a moderately powerful dragon and a few Magicals with offensive abilities, and they would all fold like playing cards.

“What can a small village do against a Lord?” Arthur says.

“They could fight back.”

Arthur snorts. “Bit of an idealist, are you?”

Lancelot only shrugs again, and Arthur can’t quite look the expression on his face, but he somehow he knows that Lancelot’s almost trying to get a rise out of him.

“We have to go,” Lancelot says.

“You can’t,” Merlin says. “It’s too dangerous. There are a lot of dragons in these mountains. I can feel them.”

“I don’t have any choice. I have to get Sophia and Aulfric to their relatives. We really need their support. So unless you’re willing to come with us—”

“Kilgharrah!” Merlin says standing up.

“What?”

“The dragon. I know his name. I can call him, I know I can. I’ll tell him to take you to the north shore. He’ll do as I say, right?”

Lancelot nods. “Yes, he will. I think. But if you call him, he’s yours. And from what I understood watching Balinor, it also means you’re his as well. It’s… a strange relationship.”

Merlin doesn’t say anything. He stands and walks to the ledge and stares into the blackness of the ravine. Arthur looks at him for a moment, pinching his lips. There’s a part of him that wants to yell at him and tell him to fucking forget it, that it’s not worth it. Merlin would be binding himself to a dragon for fuck’s sake. The idea is revolting and wrong. But if there’s something Arthur’s learned is that he also knows fuck all about magic. He doesn’t know how it feels or how it works. Merlin’s tried to explain it to him several times, and in theory he can sort of imagine what it would be like to have magic, but at the end of the day he will never be able to know. And he never wants to be in a position again where he tells a Magical what they should or should not do with their magic. He’s not that person anymore.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Arthur asks Merlin softly so the others don’t hear. He doesn’t want Merlin to see, but it would be an understatement to say this whole Dragonlord thing is unsettling him a little. He doesn’t like the thought of Merlin getting caught up in something they don’t fully understand. Arthur hates being unprepared.

“No,” Merlin says. “But I can’t let them go on their own, either. Arthur, I can feel at least three dragons sleeping more or less nearby. They’d never make it. But I can’t go with them either.” He sighs. “You were right. We need to go home. We need to tell them about what’s happening. We’re not—Fuck, we’re so not ready.”

Arthur wants to argue. He wants to say it’s too soon, even though he’s not sure for what exactly. He wants to tell Merlin they can go back and forget this whole business with the Lords and the rebellion. With everything. But that’s a foolish wish and it’s probably not what Merlin needs to hear right now. Arthur needs to trust Merlin, too. He wants to trust Merlin. He wants him to stop being scared of himself, and maybe the best way for that is to let Merlin try out his power and not insist he isn’t ready.

“You do what you think is best,” he says. “I’ll stay with you.”

Merlin looks at him for a long time. The only thing Arthur can really see is the vague outline of his lips, the deeper shadows under his sharp cheekbones, and the faint glint of his eyes.

“You really do mean that,” Merlin whispers.

“I do.” And it’s only by saying it that Arthur realises how much he actually means it. “Call the dragon, Merlin.”

And he does, in the low and loud and almost otherworldly voice he used earlier, his eyes so bright in the darkness they almost illuminate his whole face. Merlin gasps, then heaves a huge, long breath back into his lungs while the sound of his call still echoes through the night. His fumbling fingers reach for Arthur’s hand and Arthur lets him grab it, holding tight, trying to let Merlin know that he’s here. With him.

It doesn’t take long,maybe ten minutes in Arthur’s estimation. The familiar sound of the wings, and the stench of sulphur, creep into his bones and he has to make a concerted effort to not move. He gags a little on the scent, but the wind blowing through the ravine makes it more bearable. He stays as still as possible as the great shadow of an enormous dragon fills the space in front of them.

“Holy shit,” Merlin whispers, and Arthur thinks that doesn’t even begin to describe it.

It’s hard to see what colour the dragon is, but it’s enormous. Class B for sure. Arthur has only fought one or two like it in his life, and the sight of them is something out of a nightmare. A dragon like that destroyed the building he lived in with his father and Morgana. He watched a ceiling collapse on her that day.

He swallows hard. He tries to push down the wave of pure anger and hatred that fills him, because he’s still holding Merlin’s shaking hand and Arthur wants his to be steady and solid. So he closes his other fist until all the muscles in his fingers and wrist and arm ache. He clenches his jaw so hard he wonders if he’s going to shatter his teeth. But he doesn’t move.

The dragon settles on the floor of the ravine. The wind from the last flap of its wings as they come to rest on its body sends dust all over them, making them choke and cough. Its eyes are sickly yellow in the dark with the faint red glow of embers burning through his nostrils.

Merlin’s terrifyingly calm except for the tremor in his fingers.

He makes a ball of blue light in the palm of his hand, then another, and another, until there are about a dozen floating gently around them and the dragon, and they can all see its great scaly body.

“Hello, Kilgharrah,” Merlin says. Arthur’s deeply unsettled by the calm in his voice, the edge of… happiness.

“Hello, young Dragonlord. You have called me.”

“I have called you.”

Arthur has rarely been this tense in his life. He’s fighting every instinct he has, disgust and fear and anger all threatening to overwhelm him. He hasn’t heard dragons talking often and this voice is gravelly and low, but also warm and uncomfortably human-like. There’s silence for a moment until a low grumbling sound is heard, making the ground tremble, and Arthur realises that the dragon is laughing.

“Of course you did,” it says.

“Told you he was cryptic,” Lancelot says to his left. Arthur starts. He had almost forgotten about him and the others. “Kilgharrah.”

“Young Lancelot, it is good to see you. I am sorry for your loss,” the dragon—Kilgharrah—the dragon says. Arthur hates the way its voice sounds sad.

“And I’m sorry for yours,” Lancelot says.

“Kilgharrah,” Merlin says and lets go of Arthur as he takes a step forward. Arthur clenches his freed hand into another fist. There’s a dull pain in his shoulders and back from the restraint he’s putting on them to not grab at Merlin again. “I wish we had more time to talk and learn more about each other. I have so many questions. But… But I need your help before this happens.”

“Ask, young Dragonlord.”

“Merlin, please.”

The dragon chuckles and good god it’s creeping Arthur out that he can actually discern that.

“I need you to take Lancelot and the others safely to the northern shore like the Dragonlord Balinor wanted. On your back. I need you to fly them there.”

“Why didn’t you do that with Balinor?” Arthur asks Lancelot.

“It was always part of the plan, young hunter,” Kilgharrah answers instead.

“It was,” Lancelot says. “We couldn’t while there was a chance of being seen flying over the Cities and the Villages. Balinor died just before we reached these mountains where it would have been safe.”

“How did he die? I never asked,” Arthur says.

“Bandits.”

“Can you do that?” Merlin says to Kilgharrah. “Can you take them safely there?”

“If this is what you want, Merlin. Yes I can. I have to listen to you, remember?”

“But—I don’t—I still want to ask you, not order you around,” Merlin says.

“Strange isn’t it? This feeling? It’s the bond of the Dragonlord to his dragon.”

“So, will you?”

“I will.”

“Thank you.”

“He’s a good one,” Lancelot says quietly to Arthur, and Arthur turns toward him with a brief look over at Merlin.

“He is,” he says.

“You’re surprised at how happy he is with being with Kilgharrah,” Lancelot says, with a small knowing smile. The blue orbs floating around them casts moving shadows across his features. “It—It takes some getting used to.”

“Are they all like that? The Dragonlords?”

Lancelot leans against the wall of the cave, arms crossed over his chest. “Most. As far as I understand it Lords have some sort of greater understanding of dragons, an innate knowledge of them and their feelings, their hopes, their pain…”

Arthur frowns and rubs his face with his hands.

“It’s uncomfortable to think of them as being like us,” Lancelot says.

“Yeah. Yeah, it fucking is.” It’s also hard to think of some Lords showing the level of kindness and compassion and care Merlin’s showing right now as well. Arthur says so, and Lancelot shrugs.

“Just because their power compels them to take care of the dragons and to protect them, doesn’t mean they can’t be corrupted by it. Their magic applies to dragons, not other human beings.”

“How do you know so much?” Arthur asks.

“Balinor and I were— We were great friends.”

“I’m really sorry.”

Lancelot shrugs again, and for the first time he doesn’t look like the confident and self-assured rebel they just met, but sad and tired. “We’ve all lost a lot,” he says not looking at Arthur. Arthur looks back at Kilgharrah over his shoulder, and for a moment he sees another dragon, another day, one made of screams and crumbling walls, and Morgana running through the hallway towards him, her eyes wild and scared, black hair flying behind her. He sees himself turning to urge her on and then the heavy ceiling cracking and falling, crushing her under its weight.

He’s brought back from his memory by the sound of Merlin’s harsh and loud breathing. Arthur walks to him quickly, catches his arm, and pulls him back a little from the ledge.

“You’re getting tired again. You need to rest.”

“Your magic is wrong, Merlin,” Kilgharrah says.

“There’s nothing wrong with him!” Arthur snaps back at the dragon.

“There is. His power’s blocked. He has to wring it out of himself where it should flow through him like a river. It will exhaust him if he is not freed.”

Arthur doesn’t know what the fuck the bloody thing’s on about but Merlin says “My Seal,” before pulling out of Arthur’s grasp and taking his coat off.

“Fucking hell,” Lancelot says, and the others behind them, who had stayed quiet all this time, gasp along with him. “You? You’re the Three-Times Sealed?”

Merlin looks confused. “Yes?”

“We had heard of you, but no one knew if you were still alive.”

“Well, I am. Obviously.”

“Jesus Christ, and he’s a Dragonlord too. Fuck.” Lancelot sounds both gleeful and awed. “Merlin, you have to—No sorry, I can’t just—Let me come back with Kilgharrah. Let me talk to you about our cause after I’m done with this mission.”

Merlin smiles at him a little, but shuffles his feet in a way Arthur knows mean he’s uncomfortable. He looks at Arthur briefly, before nodding. “Yeah, okay. But—But I can’t promise anything. After all, I still have one Seal. They wouldn’t Unseal it at the facility, and then we were attacked by a dragon and… Well I don’t think—“

“This can be arranged, Merlin,” Kilgharrah says. The dragon clears his throat, takes a deep breath, opening his jaw wide. Arthur’s about to tackle Merlin to the ground because he’s certain that it’s about to spew fire on him, when instead it only blows warm, putrid breath over them. Arthur chokes and coughs and spits on the ground.

Then Merlin yells.

“Merlin!”

Merlin’s fallen to his knees, and Arthur falls beside him, hands fluttering over him trying to see where he’s hurt. Merlin only shakes and moans.

“Oh my god ohmygodohmygodohmygod,” Merlin says between ragged breaths.

“Merlin. Merlin tell me where it hurts. What have you done to him?” Arthur yells.

“I have merely restored the balance that had been broken,” Kilgharrah says. “Magic needs balance, young hunter. It will always seek to right itself. If you choke it, it will find other ways to free itself.”

“I don’t understand,” Arthur says, holding Merlin against him while he thrashes and mumbles, his eyes opening and closing, flickering between gold and blue the way they had done when they had fought the dragon with Freya and Mithian.

“He has found his balance,” Kilgharrah says. “Merlin will be fine now. His magic will be free. The young warlock is of the elements, they will recognise him and answer his call.”

“Be more cryptic, I dare you,” Arthur says. He can’t even find it in himself right now to be angry, not with Merlin once again trembling in his arms.

“Elemental magic. Old magic. He’ll need rest. In the morning, he’ll show you.” Kilgharrah turns his head toward Lancelot. “We should go now, Lancelot the Brave. Gather your friends.”

It doesn’t take long to get them all ready, but Arthur doesn’t help them. He just holds Merlin and runs his hand through his hair, over his cheeks. He has stopped thrashing around, and is now just mumbling incomprehensible things under his breath, crying into Arthur’s shirt.

Oliver and Margaret put up a fuss about climbing on the dragon, Sophia isn’t pleased either, and Arthur cannot blame them.

“If he isn’t all right,” he says, looking Kilgharrah straight in the eyes. “I will find you and I will kill you.”

“I wouldn’t expect any less, young hunter. You have killed many of my kind to defend yours.”

“He’ll be fine, Arthur,” Lancelot says, crouching beside him. “A dragon cannot hurt his Dragonlord. I’ll come back to Ealdor with Kilgharrah once we’re done, if that’s alright with you.”

“Yeah,” Arthur says, but he’s not really paying attention. He keeps staring at Kilgharrah. There’s a small part of him that is slowly starting to trust the beast even though he doesn’t want to, even though the thought of it makes his skin crawl. But there was something in Merlin’s voice, almost like recognition, that nags at Arthur’s brain. Merlin trusts Kilgharrah, and Arthur trusts Merlin.

Lancelot climbs onto its back and yet Kilgharrah only stares at Arthur in return.

“I liked it better when you were only beasts I had to kill. When you were nothing more than food,” Arthur says.

“So did we,” Kilgharrah says, and with a strong push of its legs and a couple flaps of his massive wings, he is gone, bringing Lancelot, Margaret, Daegal and the others with him

Arthur settles Merlin at the back of the cave and slips behind him. His blue lights are still floating around, creating eerie shadows along the ragged, rocky surfaces. Merlin’s asleep, his breathing steady and deep in a familiar and comforting way that settles Arthur’s nerves. He gathers Merlin closer to him, lays his cheek on his back and tries to sleep.

Arthur’s woken up by Merlin shifting in his arms. Outside the cave everything is the dull grey of early dawn. It’s chilly, and Arthur just wants to get closer to Merlin, bury his nose at the back of his neck where it’s soft and warm. Merlin wiggles more in his arms and Arthur holds him tighter, his grunts of displeasure only answered by some quiet laughter and small kicks against his legs.

He lets Merlin extricate himself from his grip, and is met by Merlin’s wide, blue eyes, creases from the stiff fabric of Arthur’s coat all over his right cheek as he leans over Arthur. Arthur smiles, traces the lines in Merlin’s cheek with the tip of his finger.

“Hey,” Merlin says, voice thick with the heaviness of good, deep sleep.

“Are you okay?” Arthur says just as soft because the moment feels fragile, like he could break the little bubble they’re in by speaking too loud, by asking the wrong question.

“Kilgharrah,” Merlin says with a bit of wonder that makes Arthur wrinkle his nose. All the trust he might have felt for the dragon during the night has gone now, the reality of what happened sharper and less surreal in the light of the day. Merlin laughs and pokes Arthur’s nose. “He Unsealed me, Arthur.”

Arthur sits up quickly and rubs at his eyes before focusing on Merlin’s arm. He hadn’t paid attention to it much last night, but it’s clear now: the third Seal on Merlin’s arm is as rosy as the other two. It’s just a scar, a reminder. Arthur strokes it with awe, something clenching inside of him. He can almost feel the tears welling in his eyes.

“How does it feel?”

“Amazing,” Merlin says, and leans to nuzzle at Arthur’s cheek. “Things… I don’t know how to describe it, Arthur. Things flow better now. I have so much power. I can feel it hum in my veins. It’s—good. It’s so good. I didn’t know things could feel this way. How I went all these years without this.” He kisses the side of Arthur’s neck. “I feel whole.”

Arthur grabs Merlin’s arm tightly over his Seals. It breaks his heart. The wonder and happiness in Merlin’s voice break his heart.

“I’m so sorry, Merlin.”

“Hey, hey, no. Stop that. Not your fault. Never your fault,” Merlin says hugging him. “I’m glad you came for me.”

“Always.”

When Merlin slides inside Arthur, it’s slow and careful. Merlin envelops them in a bubble of magic and the air around them feels as hot as the summer’s sun on Arthur’s skin. He loves the feeling of Merlin deep inside him and how, every time Arthur twists his hips just so to meet Merlin’s thrusts, Merlin lets out little high noises from far in his throat right against Arthur’s jaw. He loves how Merlin grips at Arthur’s leg, high on his shoulder and rolls his hips, his eyes never leaving Arthur’s.

It’s a slow build of heat and friction and Arthur has to close his eyes against the intensity of it. He can’t help but cry out when Merlin comes buried inside him. Arthur’s so full of him, so tight around Merlin that he can feel each pulse of his cock and it’s like shocks all over his spine. Merlin’s breath is wet on the inside of Arthur’s knee, and Arthur bites back a sob at the tenderness in Merlin’s kiss.

When Merlin takes Arthur’s cock into his mouth, sucking and licking slowly like it’s something that he loves, that he has to taste and savour, Arthur has a hard time breathing. His mind goes blank and his heart stutters when he strokes the shell of Merlin’s ear with his thumb and Merlin raises his eyes to look at him and smiles, Arthur’s cock still in his mouth. Arthur comes with Merlin’s lips tight around him and he doesn’t realise he’s been saying Merlin’s name over and over until Merlin nuzzles at his groin and kisses the base of Arthur’s softening cock.

They pack in silence and start the journey back to Ealdor. The sun’s higher in the sky and in the harsher light of the day, out of their little cocoon in the cave, Arthur’s anger comes back. He can’t stop thinking about last night. There’s a huge part of him that’s so fucking grateful to Kilgharrah for freeing Merlin, for helping Lancelot and his friends, but then there’s this other huge part of him that recoils at that feeling. He doesn’t want to feel gratitude or trust or anything else like that for a fucking dragon.

“I don’t like this, Merlin,” he says. He stops and turns toward him, dropping his bag. Merlin looks at it for a second then drops his own, and shakes off his coat, looking at Arthur with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t want to be friends with a fucking dragon, okay? I shouldn’t have to tell you why.”

Just the thought of collaborating with a dragon, of being allies, makes him sick. It tastes like ash in his mouth.

Merlin takes a deep breath, hands on his hips, eyes on his boots, and when he looks up at Arthur, the anguish in the lines around his eyes and the downturn of his mouth are unexpected and make Arthur take an instinctive step forward.

“I know that,” Merlin says. “Don’t you think I hate it too? But… I can’t help how this feels. I have to protect them. And ever since Lancelot mentioned Kilgharrah’s name yesterday, it—I don’t know. It called to me. I had to answer, I had to talk to him.”

“I don’t know if I can, if I—“

“Do you think it’s easier for me?” Merlin says, and Arthur looks at him sharply, at his face contorted with pain and hurt and confusion. And that surprises Arthur out of the diatribe he was about to go into because Merlin has shown nothing but awe and elation and even joy with Kilgharrah.

“Merlin—”

“I hate them, Arthur, I know I hate them. It’s there in my mind; all the things they’ve destroyed, all the people that have died. It’s there,” he says with his hand on his head. “But here.” He moves his hand to his chest. “Here it tells me about how they feel, what they think. I can feel and hear their thoughts, and I need to protect them. Fiercely. I need to. Just the thought of one dying makes me sick. The thought of eating one makes me sick.”

He pulls at his hair a little bit and chews on his lip. “I know it’s the magic. I know it’s these powers I have and I feel cheated. Like I have no control over it, like I’m just a puppet that can’t decide what I should do, how I should act, what’s right and what’s wrong. But with Kilgharrah… it was different too. It felt right. But I have no idea if what I feel is just the magic talking or… But then I tell myself that the magic is me. We’re not two different entities, we’re one. So what does that mean?”

Arthur takes a step toward him. He doesn’t know how to make this better, he’s not even sure he completely understands what this must feel like for Merlin. Things are changing, have already changed and he’s kept his eyes closed, has looked away and pretended that wasn’t the case. They all have. There’s a rebellion happening in the Cities, in other Villages, and they weren’t even aware of how bad things had become until recently.

“And now—now with everything that’s happening…” Merlin throws his hands up and sighs. “I don’t know. Everything’s changing so fast. There are Lords going north, others are maybe fighting for us. How did it come to this? How did we not see it coming”

Arthur passes a hand through his hair. It’s not like he hasn’t been thinking about it, how they’ve been blindsided with everything that’s happened recently, and adding to that the discovery of Merlin’s new powers… It’s a lot.

“Oh god,” Merlin says, with wide eyes. “Arthur what am I supposed to do? I have all this power right? And I’m a Dragonlord.”

“Merlin…”

“Lancelot will come back and he’ll expect me to help him, but I don’t know what to do.” Merlin grabs one of Arthur’s hands between his own. “Arthur, I have no idea what I’m doing, or supposed to do, or if even I can do anything, and I don’t—“

“Hey, hey, shhh,” Arthur says, stroking Merlin’s cheek with his free hand. “Breathe, idiot, breathe. It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”

Merlin lets out a long breath and leans his forehead against Arthur’s shoulder, and Arthur kisses the top of his head.

“Maybe… Maybe it’s time to move on,” he says against Merlin’s hair even though everything in him wants to hold on to what they have, put his head in the sand and pretend that nothing’s changed.

“What do you mean?”

“The world’s changing again, obviously, and—We can’t not be prepared for it. It seems inevitable it’s going to catch up to us anyway. These things, Sigan, Lancelot, the rebellion… Hell, maybe even your powers. They didn’t happen suddenly. They aren’t new things. I think they’ve been happening for a while now, moving around us without us realising, and now… Now we know.”

Merlin pulls back and Arthur smiles at him. “We’re lucky, in a way, to know what we know. Maybe it’s enough. Maybe we can do something about it.”

Merlin says nothing, just grabs his coat from where he left it on a rock, hits it a couple of times with the flat of his hand, sending dust around him. He coughs a little and glares at Arthur, but Arthur only smirks at him.

Merlin puts on his coat and grabs his bag. “I want to point out that you’re the one who said the words ‘moving on’ first.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I’m just saying you should follow your own advice,” Merlin says, finishing strapping everything to his bag. He’s over casual about it, but Arthur knows they’re not talking about the dragons, or the rebellion, anymore.

It’s strange how certain things have crept up on Arthur without his notice. All the things he’s learned about Merlin through the past few years, the way he can read his moods so easily now. Merlin wants him to say that everything’s fine. That he won’t stay awake at night anymore pondering what could have been and all the things he’s done wrong. That he’ll go to assemblies and speak sometimes instead of letting Mithian most of the time. That he’ll just stop wondering if it’s alright for him to kiss Merlin. Or how Merlin—beautiful, funny, infuriating, magical Merlin—can even bear to be close to Arthur Pendragon, much less fuck him and let Arthur fuck him too, touch him in ways that make Arthur wonder sometimes what he really means to Merlin, what Merlin sees when he looks at him with this fond and secret little smile of his.

But things aren’t that easy. And while Arthur’s willing to say that they’re getting better, that he might even believe Merlin sometimes when he says that Arthur has nothing to prove, nothing to atone for, it’s not something he can completely shake off just like that, just with a couple of nights cuddling with Merlin in a cave and a small epiphany that Ealdor really is his home and family.

“It’s going to take time,” he says instead, no longer denying that he’s not going to get there someday because for the first time in years, Arthur wants things to get better. He needs them to. And for the first time it also seems possible. Merlin must recognize that too, because he looks up at Arthur with wide, surprised eyes, his face breaking in a broad smile.

Merlin hitches his backpack on his shoulders. “So, this running away thing turned out to be a good thing after all.”

Arthur throws him a dark look. “Don’t think that justifies it, Merlin.”

“Oh, I think it does.”

“Let’s go home,” Arthur says instead, walking past Merlin, hiding his smile at Merlin’s look of glee. Merlin’s laugher bounces and echoes against the rocky walls of the ravine, but it stops as suddenly as it started.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“I know.”

“No, I mean— I don’t know what I was thinking. I shouldn’t have left. Especially knowing about what happened in Nemhain. I just—I panicked.”

“Merlin—”

“I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things I could do wrong. All the things I could become. It felt—I don’t know. It was stupid and selfish.”

“Yeah, it was,” Arthur says, taking a step toward him. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“Grovel?” Merlin says, obviously aiming for something light, but it falls flat, and Arthur just raises an eyebrow at him.

“Well, I do rather like you on your knees.”

Merlin lets out a small breathless laugh and straightens himself, squaring his shoulders. “I’m going to figure this out,” he says. “I don’t know how, and I’m still scared but… I don’t want to be. I want to help Ealdor. Especially with everything that we’ve learned yesterday.”

“We did get very lucky,” Arthur says, starting to walk again.

“Yes, it was very fortuitous.”

“Wow, that’s a big word, Merlin. Are sure you know what it means?”

“Arse.”

Arthur makes the sounds of a buzzer with his mouth. “Wrong.”

Merlin pushes at his shoulder and Arthur grins at him. “I mean it though, we really got super lucky by meeting Lancelot and Kilgharrah,” Merlin says. “It would be stupid to not take advantage.”

“It would.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“You keep saying that.”

“You keep panicking. Just don’t do anything fucking stupid like that again.”

Merlin hums and they continue their climb.

“Serendipitous,” Merlin says after a while.

“What?”

“It’s another word for fortuitous.”

Arthur wipes the sweat from his forehead. “I am blown away by your knowledge. Really, I might not look it, but I’m in awe. I’m flabbergasted. Completely overwhelmed.”

Merlin shoots him a glare, but bites his lip to keep from laughing. “Why, thank you, Arthur. I’m so happy you can finally recognise my superior skills. Say what you want though, we were very fortunate. Oh look, another word for fortuitous!”

Arthur widens his eyes at him. “I don’t know, Merlin. Maybe it wasn’t luck, maybe it was fate. Oh my god, maybe it was destiny”

Merlin snorts. “Please, destiny’s rubbish. What a bunch of bullshit.”

Merlin looks so offended at the idea, his whole face changing like he’s just suck on a lemon, that Arthur has to take a moment to lean on the rocky wall of the ravine, unable to stop laughing.

It takes them longer to climb back out of the ravine than it did yesterday going down, even with Merlin as tired as he was. As soon as they get over the ridge, sweaty and out of breath, Arthur sees it. A dragon. It’s still far away, but it’s definitely flying in their direction and if it hasn’t seen them yet, it will soon.

“Um, Merlin?”

“Dragon, I know,” Merlin says, bent over with his hands on his thighs trying to catch his breath. “It’s hungry, by the way.”

“How reassuring. You plan to do something about it?”

“Why me? Jesus, I need to start training with you guys, this is ridiculous.”

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

“It hasn’t seen us yet, let’s just hide behind those boulders over there until it flies past.”

Arthur looks at him incredulously. His fingers itch to grab his shotgun, but instead he widens his stance and stays put.

“No.”

“What?”

“Do your thing.”

“Arthur—my thing?”

“You’re a Dragonlord, fucking use your fucking powers already.”

Merlin stands up straighter and looks at the dragon. It’s much closer now. It must have seen them. The wind at this altitude makes the stench of it almost unnoticeable, but they can hear the powerful beat of its wings. Arthur really wants to run right now, but he clenches his jaw against the impulse.

“Arthur—Arthur, we should—“

“Do it.”

“I don’t—“

“Jesus Christ, Merlin, tell the goddamn dragon to fuck off, already!” Arthur says, and kicks Merlin in the shin.

The blow seems to shake Merlin out of his doubts and he looks surprised for a second before letting out an incredulous laugh.

“Did you just—You spend too much time with Mithian,” he says, pointing at Arthur, then turns toward the dragon and lets the foreign, but increasingly familiar, words flow out of his mouth, easy and smooth, like he’s spoken them all his life.

The dragon comes to a comically short stop, gives a sharp, high cry, then flies away to their right, without even looking at them. Merlin turns to Arthur with a bright, delighted smile.

“Well,” he says. “That was actually pretty easy.”

“Oh my god.” Arthur starts going down the rocky hill, making sure to glare at Merlin as he passes him.

“Hey, maybe I can call her back and see if she’ll give us a ride to Ealdor,” Merlin says behind him, and Arthur whips around to look at him.

“Don’t you dare, Emrys. I’m willing to make an effort for your dragon, because I can see he already means something to you, and we’ll most likely need him soon, but don’t push it. I am not riding a fucking dragon.”

“Awwww, Arthur. You ruin all my fun.”

“I hate you.”

When they get to Ealdor, Gwaine’s on guard duty on the roof of the bunker.

“Gwaine!”

Gwaine turns around and lets out a cry of joy when he sees them. He jumps down from his perch and hugs them as soon as they’re close enough.

“Jesus, it’s good to see you,” he says with a smile, but there’s a tightness to it that’s unusual for Gwaine. Alarm bells go off in Arthur’s head right away, and he clamps Gwaine’s shoulder in his hand.

“Gwaine, what’s wrong?”

Gwaine loses his smile and shakes his head, urging them toward the bunker and pounding the code on the door. “We’re in trouble,” he says while they get in the lift. “Late last night, Elyan received a secret transmission from Nemhain. They’re under Sigan’s rule now, as you know. Apparently a few days ago a merchant tried to negotiate with Sigan so they’d let him keep his Magical daughter. He told them everything he knew. Including about us. Elyan’s contact said they think they knew our exact location, but… Fuck, they’re coming for us.”

“What?” Arthur has to put a hand on the wall of the lift as the world shifts once more under his feet. It’s not like he wasn’t really expecting it. Not after they got the first news about Nemhain’s fall, and not after what Margaret and Lancelot said back in the caves. But he wasn’t expecting it like this, not so soon, not when they weren’t ready.

His skin tightens around him, his throat goes dry, and he quickly recognizes the first signs of panic. He hasn’t felt them in a long time. He meets Merlin’s wide and scared eyes over Gwaine’s shoulder. Merlin shakes his head over and over and Arthur wants to reach for him, but Gwaine’s still speaking and instead he wrenches his eyes away and tries to ground himself.

“We’re still figuring out what to do,” Gwaine’s saying as the doors of the lift open and they get out. “Thing is, we don’t really know what they can do. Of course they have at least a dragon, but—“

“Arthur! Merlin!”

They turn around to see Mithian running toward them. She throws her arms around Arthur and he holds her a bit tighter than normal, takes a deep breath of her familiar scent to try and calm the clamour in his head.

“I’m glad you’re back,” she says into his heck. She pulls back and smiles at Merlin too, before punching him on the shoulder. “Don’t do that again, Emrys.” Merlin gives her a sheepish smile, weak and forced, and rubs at his shoulder.

“Mith, what’s happening?” Arthur says. His heart’s still beating fast in his chest, his hands are getting sweaty. He needs to know. He needs to know everything so he can do something about it.

“I told them about Sigan,” Gwaine says.

Mithian starts walking and Arthur follows. Merlin hasn’t said anything yet, and when Arthur glances at him, he looks in shock. Arthur reaches out and squeezes his hand. It’s strangely comforting that Merlin’s hand is as sweaty as his own, and somehow that quiets the panic in his chest.

“We don’t know what they know, that’s the problem,” Mithian says. “Do they know we’re underground, is the biggest question. Then how many Magicals does Sigan have with him? How many dragons? What can they do? That’s the fucking problem, isn’t it? Magic is still so new, even the Magicals haven’t figured out yet everything they can do with it. Even here, every day it seems like a new way to make clocks work is found, or how to create the illusion of a window on the wall, or I don’t know what else.”

“Was the armoury restocked?” Arthur asks, hearing his voice taking the sterner tone of his commanding days in the army, slipping into it like there wasn’t years between now and the last time he’d used it. Mithian looks at him sharply, reacting to it automatically.

“Please, who do you take me for? And where do you think most Magicals are right now?”

Arthur gives her a small smile.

“It’s not going to be enough, though,” she says, a bit sad. “I don’t think we can stay.”

“Maybe we can,” Merlin says, his voice cracks a little, but he straightens himself and looks steadily at Mithian. “There are a few things they won’t expect.”

“As in?”

“Well,” he says, taking his coat off, showing his completely Unsealed arm. “For one, I can kick some major arses.”

Mithian and Gwaine’s eyes go round in surprise, and the look would be almost comical if they weren’t in such a dire situation.

“Holy shit,” Mithian says. “How—What? When—Jesus Christ”

“And for two…” Merlin continues with a small smile, pausing for effect.

“Oh just spit it out, Merlin, you big fucking drama queen,” Gwaine says, eyes still fixed with awe and wonder on his arm.

“I have a dragon,” he says, a bit proud, almost like a little boy, and this time Arthur can’t hold back his laugh and gives him a fond smile. It somehow diffuses the tense atmosphere.

Mithian looks at them and slowly nods. “Of fucking course,” she says. “Of fucking course you two would leave all desperate and broken and whatever the fuck you were feeling at the time, just to come back all lovey-dovey like you haven’t taken forever to get there, and with more power than anything that has ever been seen and with a fucking dragon.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “I hate you Pendragon, you always make me miss all the fun.”

“I think we need an assembly,” Gwaine says, still looking at Merlin with a whole lot of admiration.

“Yes.” Mithan claps her hands. “You two stay here, I’m going to find Gwen. No, better yet, let’s meet in the communication room. Elyan’s been spending all his time there trying to get more info.”

Arthur and Merlin leave Gwaine to drop their bags quickly in Arthur’s room, and get rid of their dusty coats.

As soon as the door closes, Merlin leans against it and hides his face in his hands. “Fuck fuckfuckfuckfuck,” he says, then punches the door with the side of his fist.

“Merlin?”

“What the fuck will I do?” Merlin says, turning around and looking at Arthur. “I just got all my power back. Why did I tell Mithian all that? I can’t do this, Arthur. I’ll give them hope and then—We’ll die, and it’s going to be my fault, and—“

Arthur has Merlin by the shoulders before he can finish. He slides his hands to the sides of his neck and cups his jaw, thumbs stroking the underside of it, the way he knows soothes Merlin. This he can do, this he knows. He was a soldier for a long time; he can deal with high stakes, high pressure situations. He feels better when he can act on something. The uncertainty and lack of information of their situation are frustrating, but he already has a plan half formed in his head, didn’t realise until now a part of him was already thinking about it the moment Gwaine gave them the news in the lift.

“Don’t panic now, Merlin,” he says, soft but stern. “This is what we do.” He pulls back to make sure Merlin’s looking at him. “First, we gather all the intel we can. Second, we come up with a plan. Third, we come up with a second plan, and a third one. Fourth, we fight. Fifth, we win. Simple.”

Merlin lets his head thunk back on the door and laughs a bit breathlessly. “Shit.” He surges forward and kisses Arthur hard on the lips, pushing his tongue into his mouth, demanding and greedy, hands already slipping under Arthur’s shirt.

Arthur kisses back for a moment, letting himself fall into the warmth of Merlin’s mouth and the urgency and need of his fingers. “Not really the time,” he says, panting a little.

Merlin smiles a little. “Told you the whole soldier thing was, well, a thing.”

“And I’m just learning about that, now?” Arthur doesn’t point out how ridiculous it is that they’re having this conversation because Merlin has stopped shaking with nerves and if Arthur can keep him from freaking out, then he’s not going to get picky about the method, certainly not this one.

“Maybe it’s like the magic thing,” Merlin says. “Maybe you weren’t paying attention.”

“I am now.”

“Good.” Merlin gives him a small, shy smile from under his eyelashes that Arthur doesn’t buy for a minute, but it’s still a look that makes him want to do indecent things to Merlin’s body on the spot.

He crowds Merlin up against the door, brushes his lips along his jaw, and bites lightly on his earlobe. “Remember Merlin, I wasn’t just a soldier. I was a Captain.”

“You bastard.”

Arthur laughs and pulls back. “We have to go. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’re trying to avoid your mother.”

“I’d never do that.”

“Right. Of course not.”

Merlin quickly becomes serious again, and takes a deep breath. “First, we gather intel, right?” he says, and Arthur nods.

“Intel first, always.”

“Okay. Okay, yeah. Let’s go then.”

Arthur straightens his shirt giving Merlin a little glare when Merlin laughs quietly and pats at Arthur’s hair. He can’t help the surge of heat in his stomach when Merlin says Captain under his breath, with more fondness than deference.

When they get to the communication room, Mithian isn’t there yet, but Gwaine, Elyan, Percival and Hunith are.

Hunith’s on Merlin immediately, hugging him with a fierceness that makes Arthur avert his eyes. Percival embraces Arthur in a rare display of physical affection, and Arthur is surprisingly comforted by it. He’s always appreciated that Percy seemed to know when Arthur needed space, but Arthur now realises that this doesn’t mean he doesn’t worry or care, and when Percival squeezes his shoulder, Arthur gives him a smile and a nod, a lump in his throat.

“Better?” Percival says.

“Yeah,” Arthur says, smiling wider. “Yeah, better. I mean, except for this whole…”

Percival hums in approval. “You came back just in time.”

Hunith takes Merlin’s face between her hands. “You’re almost thirty, Merlin. Next time you feel like acting like you’re fifteen again, do us all a favour and get horribly drunk, okay? You can slam your door and yell at me that I can’t tell you what to do, and then I’ll just watch while you cry in the bathroom over a boy until you’re done vomiting.”

“Mum. Do you really—Jesus.”

Hunith just smiles at him, and Merlin scowls, but kisses her forehead.

“Fine,” he says. “I promise.”

“That’s my boy.” Hunith says with a smile, running her fingers over the scars of Merlin’s Seals, her eyes bright and shiny.

Merlin groans, and bats her hands away, like he is fifteen again and doesn’t want his mum fussing over him. “It was a good thing, okay!” he says. “Look, I lost my last Seal, we got a dragon, and Arthur made all kinds of important self-discoveries—

“Thanks, Merlin.”

“—Me going away to learn about my powers was a great decision, thank you very much.”

“You mean you running away,” Hunith says sternly.

Merlin only narrows his eyes at her. Something clenches in Arthur’s chest at their sight, like he’s seeing teenage Merlin fighting with his mom after a night of being sick, literally, over a boy, and it seems so normal and foreign at the same time, he has to look away again, a sharp ache and longing twisting at his heart.

Just then, Mithian comes in, Gwen, Gaius, and Alice in tow.

Gwen squeezes Arthur’s arm and punches Merlin’s shoulder. “You made your mother cry,” she says, trying for stern but completely failing because she can’t seem to stop herself from smiling.

“You’ve been spending too much time with Mithian,” Merlin mumbles.

“Oi!”

“Children, children,” Gaius says, not even angry, but it nevertheless brings them all back to the matter at hand, the urgency and seriousness of it all. He turns to Arthur. “I understand you have some news to give us. Why don’t you start?”

Arthur tells them of Lancelot and the rebellion, and Merlin talks of Kilgharrah. There’s an edge of awe, even excitement when he talks about calling the dragon to him that Arthur can see makes some of their friends uncomfortable. They send Arthur quick looks, some worried, some frowning, so Arthur tries to look as calm and collected as he can, even if it unnerves him as well. They’ll all have to get used to it because Kilgharrah is part of Arthur’s plan.

“What does it mean, by ‘elemental magic’?” Percival asks, once Merlin is done.

“I’m not sure. I was out of it at that point, but that’s what he said to Arthur.” Merlin looks at him for confirmation, and Arthur nods.

“It’s old magic,” Gaius says. “There aren’t a lot of documents left from before Seals were implemented, but I’m fairly certain that elemental magic is very old magic, not seen in humans, or not in recent memory at least. Dragons have elemental magic.”

“Fire.”

“Precisely.”

“But what does it mean for me?”

“I don’t know, my boy. There has never been anyone like you before.”

The room is silent, and all eyes are on Merlin. Merlin’s looking down at his shoes and he fidgets with the edge of his shirt. Even from where he stands Arthur can see his fingers tremble. He remembers the way Merlin had looked so scared after discovering he had Dragonlord powers, and that wasn’t long ago at all. Arthur can’t fathom how overwhelming it must be right now, and all he wants is to yell at everyone to stop looking at Merlin like that, like he’s something new, and grand, but potentially dangerous. It’s like they’re back to a week ago and Arthur wants none of it. Merlin will never be able to not be afraid of his own powers if the people he cares about and loves are also scared of him.

“We have time to figure it out,” Arthur says, effectively making everyone look at him. He turns to Elyan. “Any news on Sigan?”

Elyan looks at him blankly for a moment, until he startles out of it and starts pushing a few buttons on his radio. “Yes, actually. I’ve established a better signal with my contact. Sigan is definitely planning to come for us, but as far as he knows we are blissfully unaware. He’s taking his time, enjoying Nemhain. He’s taking advantage of it while he’s there.”

“How long before he moves?”

“My contact doesn’t know. Maybe two weeks. He’s not worried about us, but he’ll get bored of Nemhain pretty fast. If we come up with a plan though, I can ask my contact if they can maybe distract him, do something, anything, to buy us some time.”

Mithian frowns, sitting on the edge of the table. “They offered?”

Elyan gives a small smile. “It’s funny that you met Lancelot, Arthur, because my contact mentioned him. Well, he mentioned a man that came to their town, just a few weeks before Sigan got there. A man and a Dragonlord trying to get them involved in their, what they called at the time, ‘foolish and unnecessary rebellion’.”

Arthur can’t help himself. He laughs. “They didn’t go for it.”

“No. Not then.”

“But now they’ll help.”

Elyan nods. “We’re already improved the communications greatly, and we’re setting up a network between all the Free Villages. Seems like radio silence doesn’t really protect us anymore, anyway… if it ever did.”

It’s strange how they’ve all accidentally walked into a game that was already in play, with no knowledge that it was even happening, so close to being swept up and taken out of the board before they even had time to realise they actually had a chance to play themselves.

“Oh,” Mithian says pointing at Arthur. “Oh I like this face, this is a good face.” And Percival’s nodding along with her.

“What?” Gwaine asks.

“Arthur has a plan,” Percival says.

They all look at him and Arthur’s mind is still going at a mile an hour through all the possibilities, the things they know, and the ones they don’t. What needs to be confirmed, their assets. Everything.

“Okay,” he says after a moment. “I think we have two choices here. We fight, or we retreat. We can leave Ealdor and take refuge in the caves where Merlin and I met Lancelot. Chances are they’ll find us there at one point, but who knows how long it would take. It’s less secure than here and there won’t be any electricity or anything, but it’s not impossible to live there for a while if need be, especially with magic. We can even retreat more north if we have to. It all depends how desperate Sigan is to find us, but it’s not impossible to avoid a confrontation altogether.”

“How desperate is he really?” Hunith asks.

“I don’t know,” Arthur says. “He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to come and get us, which is good, but I think it has more to do with his own arrogance and overconfidence. Eventually, he’ll come.”

“It makes sense,” Mithian says. “The Queen must know about the rebellion. Or there must be rumours. What if they’re trying to take us out before we join it? It would be the wisest move. Arthur, what’s the second choice?”

“We put up a fight. We take anyone who can fight and is willing, Magicals and non-Magicals, and we make a stand. We have Merlin. We have Kilgharrah.” Arthur catches the pleased smile on Merlin’s face when he uses the dragon’s name. “We have Freya too, if she’s willing.”

“Arthur…” Mithian says with a frown, shaking her head.

“It’s for her to decide, of course,” he says, looking at her.

She pinches her lips and nods, taking a quick look around her and clearing her throat. “You’ll have to ask her. She’s in the armoury with the other Magicals right now. They’re working on the weapons.”

“That’s good,” Arthur says. “They won’t expect that, Sigan and his lot. We might not have a lot of Magicals with dragon-fighting abilities, none in fact, but our Magicals are pretty fucking inventive. I’m sure they can come up with a few surprises.”

Gwen leans in over the table. “But what about those of us who can’t shoot or fight? What about the children and the elderly?” She shoots an apologetic look to Gaius and Alice.

“Don’t look at us like that, girl,” Alice says. “If Ealdor decides to fight, I’m staying. You’ll need healers.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Gaius says.

Arthur takes down the map of Albion from the wall and lays it down on the table. “We won’t be fighting here, Gwen. We’ll fight…” He traces his finger along the map. “Here. Mith, Percy, you remember the valley we crossed when we first came here?”

They both lean over the map. “Yeah, the one we had to camp in a hole for three days waiting for a starless night to cross. I remember,” Percival says. “There’s a high hill right beside it, too. Good for an ambush.”

“Exactly,” Arthur says. “It’s about a day and a half from here. That’s where we’d make our stand, if we decide to. And we can prepare the caves in case we need to retreat anyway. If things go sour…” He takes a pause, tries not to let his mind linger on the thought. “It’s enough time to evacuate Ealdor, the children, everyone left there before Sigan reaches it. Elyan, do they know that we’re underground?”

“My contact didn’t say.”

“We’ll assume that they do. Let’s take as little as possible for granted. What kind of force did Sigan have when he took Nemhain?”

“As far as I’ve learned,” Elyan says. “Sigan has a huge, red dragon at his command, and at least a dozen Magicals.”

Arthur nods, it’s about what he’d expected. “I think it’s safe to assume that since Sigan doesn’t know we know he’s coming, he’s not going to bring more with him. He doesn’t know about Merlin either.” Arthur looks at Elyan for confirmation and gets an affirmative. “Good. Elyan, try to see if your contact knows what kind of powers Sigan’s Magicals wield, but even without that information, I think we have a good chance here.”

Arthur lets the silence fill the room once more. Lets the plan work its way into their minds. He stares at the map and there’s a warm certainty in the center of his chest, something that tells him they can do this.

“What happens after?” Hunith asks. “If we fight them, what happens after?”

That’s the tricky part. If they do this there’s no coming back and he tells them so. “Hopefully this would be the spark needed for all the others Lancelot talked about to rise up and do their part. Those who want to stay and fight can. We’re the last village north. If we move south, there’s a chance they’ll never get here, and if they do, we have our escape route to the north now. But—”

“Things won’t be the same, will they?” Gwen says. “No matter what we choose.”

Arthur shakes his head. “I’m afraid the world has caught up to us, Gwen.”

She laughs a little, but it’s hollow. “And we suddenly find ourselves on the front lines.” She straightens her shoulders and takes a deep breath. “It would be nice to know more about this rebellion though. How many people are in it? Are they going to come to our help if we need them?”

“Lancelot’s coming back here with Kilgharrah,” Merlin says. “He’ll tell us more then. It shouldn’t take them more than two or three days.”

“Good,” Gwen says. “I’ll call for an assembly right now. We’ll lay down the plan and tell everyone to talk and think about it. I want to stress that we can decide to retreat. And once Lancelot arrives, we’ll have another meeting and then we can decide what we do.”

“Seems like the best course of action,” Gwaine says. “But as far as I’m concerned, I’m in for the fight.”

Mithian and Percival both nod too, though Arthur was expecting them to. He’s surprised to see that Elyan is as well, and even Hunith has that fierce light in her eyes that’s exactly like Merlin’s when he’s about to start yelling at Arthur—combative and rebellious.

“So. What do we do, Captain?” Mithian says turning to him.

“This isn’t the army, Mith.”

“No,” she says with a wry grin, “but it’s war.”

Arthur leans back against the wall and lets out a deep breath. The world is about to shift once more, and he thinks it might take him with it for a moment, but then he catches Merlin’s eyes across the room, and Merlin’s smile is shaky, but proud, and Arthur’s on solid ground again.

“You were brilliant,” Merlin says into Arthur’s neck. “I knew you had it in you.”

“What?” Arthur’s distracted by the way Merlin’s grinding against him, too hurried to even take off his trousers. He’d just pushed Arthur on the bed as soon as they made it back to his room, kissing him deeply, all rough fingers digging his his skin, and sharp movements of his hips. All Arthur could do was hold on to Merlin let himself be ridden into the bed. He’s completely distracted by the way Merlin bites his lower lip, and the warmth of his breath on his skin.

Merlin pulls back and takes Arthur’s face between his hands, the movement of his hips slowing down, but not stopping as it turns languid and gentle. “You’ll lead us, Arthur. You’ll be great. I’m sure of it.” Arthur scoffs, but Merlin just frowns at him, and shakes his head. “No, no. None of that. Don’t look like that, I thought—I thought that you’d understood in the communications room.”

“Understood what?” Arthur’s breathless. Merlin’s urgency caught him off guard, and he wants to look away from Merlin’s focused stare. There are things in it that Arthur’s not sure he’s ready to see, much less acknowledge. The thing inside his chest flares a bit and he bites his lip against it, wants to move his head to the side, but Merlin’s hands are steady, even as his breath stutters around small grunts.

“No,” he says softly. “Don’t look away, please.”

“Merlin—”

“I need you to do one thing for me, Arthur. Just one, all right? I think you’re ready now. I think—I need you to—“

“What?”

Merlin bends down and kisses Arthur’s so tenderly, like he’s never done before, fingers shaking against Arthur’s cheeks. It’s chaste and gone in an instant, but it makes something break inside Arthur. Merlin wraps his arms around Arthur’s shoulders, his lips against his ear.

“You’re going to let me love you,” he whispers.

Arthur chokes on a gasp, and suddenly, unexpectedly, comes in his trousers while Merlin’s hips still grind against him. Arthur puts his arms around Merlin’s body and holds him close, as close as he can, and listens to his pants and moans until he comes too. He doesn’t let go for a long time.

Arthur startles from where he was drifting off against Merlin when a loud knock comes on his door.

“One moment!” he yells, trying to disentangle himself from Merlin’s limbs and the rumpled sheets under them, not helped at all by the fact that Merlin refuses to move.

“No worries,” Mithian says on the other side of the door. “It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, I swear.”

Arthur opens the door and glares at her. She just sticks her tongue out at him.

“Mithian, Freya, what can I do for you?”

Mithian becomes serious once more. “Freya wanted to talk to you and Merlin.”

“I’ll fight for you,” Freya says as soon as the door’s closed.

“Are you sure?”

Freya nods and sits on the corner of the bed. Merlin sits up beside her and Mithian just leans against the wall and crosses her arms. To anybody else she might just look disapproving, but to Arthur she looks all kinds of worried.

“I’m sure,” Freya says. She turns to Merlin. “Mith told me about everything. Are you alright?”

Merlin smiles softly at her. “Yeah. Feels good, you know. Free.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Freya,” Arthur says. “It could be really dangerous. Last time… You looked really lost.”

Freya takes a deep breath. “It is dangerous. The longer I stay in my other form, the more lost I get inside of it. It gets harder and harder to shift back.”

“Could you get stuck forever?”

“No, I don’t think so. The shift—When I do it on purpose, it’s not… it’s not natural. Not what the curse is meant to be.”

“What do you mean?” Merlin asks.

“The curse has me involuntarily shift at night. That’s why I have the tattoo, it keeps it from happening. It’s harder on full moons, but it means I don’t change and attack people.”

“But that time with the dragon…”

“Yeah, after being Unsealed, I discovered that I could use my magic to shift whenever I wanted. It’s just that I get lost in the shape the longer I stay in it.” She turns to Arthur. “I want to help, but I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“It’s too risky,” Mithian says, loud and angry. Freya glares at her. “I don’t want to have to shoot you,” Mithian says softer.

“But I want to help. This is my home too, now. I’ve fought with this form before, dozens of battles. I can do it again. Maybe I can train myself to control it better, I don’t know.”

“I could ask Kilgharrah,” Merlin says.

“What?”

“Well, he fixed my last Seal, didn’t he? Maybe he could do something for you. If you want.”

Freya looks at him gravely for a moment. “It’s a bit weird,” she says after a moment. “Getting help from a dragon.”

“I know.”

Arthur looks at Mithian. She’s staring at Freya, and her fingers are twitching at her sides like she wants to reach out, her jaw working silently like she’s keeping herself from saying something.

“Okay,” Freya says with a long sigh. “You can ask it—him.” Merlin’s smile is blinding.

“What if the dragon can’t though,” Mithian says. “What then?”

“Merlin,” Arthur says before Mithian totally loses it. “Can’t you invent some sort of magical tranquilizer? Something that we could use to subdue Freya without hurting her if she loses control? Is that something possible?”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Merlin says, looking pleased. “It’s entirely possible. I’d have to talk about it with Gaius and the other Magicals, but I’m sure we can figure something out.”

“Would that be okay with you, Freya?”

She looks at them with a wide smile, a mildly incredulous look in her eyes. “That’d be—Wow—that’d be brilliant. You would do that?”

“You fight for us, we fight for you,” Arthur says and Mithian looks sharply at him. It’s something they used to say to each other back in the Coalition. In fact, it’s one of the first thing he said to Mithian. And he means it. Because for Arthur it’s a promise. It’s about never giving up on someone. It’s about friends and it’s about family. He really likes Freya, but more than that, he loves Mithian. And Freya’s obviously important to her in a way that Arthur understands now, can truly recognize, and that alone makes her important to Arthur.

“Is that some kind of All For One, One For All thing?” Merlin asks.

“Yes,” Mithian says, smiling at Arthur.

“There you are,” Arthur says, finding Merlin outside of the bunker where he’s facing the downslope spreading in front of them. He throws Arthur a grin over his shoulder, windswept dark hair falling over eyes as blue as the sky in the bright afternoon sun. Arthur’s heart skips a beat.

“I think I’ve figured out what Kilgharrah meant by elemental magic,” Merlin says.

Without waiting for Arthur’s question, he flicks his wrist, then tightens his hand into a fist and suddenly, even though there’s not a cloud in the sky, a bolt of lightning hits the ground far in front of them, leaving it black and smoking. The hairs on Arthur’s arms raise and he shivers, feeling the electricity in the air, the power emanating from Merlin, almost shimmering gold on his skin. It smells like ozone and sunshine.

“That’s—“

“Scary?”

“Incredible.” Arthur can feel it deep in his bones; Merlin’s magic is around them, like it refuses to settle. It glides over his skin, permeates the air he breathes. It’s almost tangible when Arthur spreads his fingers wide in front of him, thick and powerful. He can’t help but reach to trace Merlin’s Seals with his fingers, and marvels at all the wildness they’ve uncovered underneath them.

“I’m sor—“

“Three days,” Merlin says.

“Huh?”

“That’s your new record. You went three days without apologising for something stupid.”

“Oh, fuck off”

Merlin smiles at him. “You did say it would take you time. Bit slow, if you want my opinion—“

“Which I don’t.”

“But, I’m willing to wait. I’m a very patient man, be grateful.”

Arthur only rolls his eyes. Merlin opens his hand between them and creates a small fire dragon in his palm.

“I don’t know if I want—” He waves his other hand. “Everything that’s to come.”

“Me neither,” Arthur says, putting his arm around Merlin’s waist. “But I don’t want to let them take away our home without a fight.”

“No.”

The beeping of the bunker door opening echoes in the quiet around them startling them apart. Mithian shakes her head at them.

“Down boys, I’m not here to interrupt your little romantic moment, I’m only looking for Freya,” she says.

“She’s over there,” Merlin says, pointing to the far left where Freya’s been practicing her transformation far from prying eyes. “I think she’s starting to enjoy herself a lot, actually.”

“Tell me about it,” Mithian says. “Sometimes at night, I swear she’s purring.” Arthur raises an eyebrow at her. “Oh shush, don’t act like you didn’t know.”

He does laugh, though, when she starts blushing a little and Merlin lets out a high awwwww.

“I hate you both.”

“Liar,” Merlin says. “You love us. Arthur lets you boss him around, and my dragon will help your girlfriend. We’re your favourite people.”

Mithian narrows her eyes at them, but Arthur doesn’t miss the quirk of her lips as she tries to hide how pleased she really is. She waves at them, making a show of grumbling under her breath and jogs away in Freya’s direction.

Arthur looks at her for a moment, before turning back to Merlin. He’s playing with the little dragon in his hand, a small frown on his face. Arthur smoothes the line between his eyes with his thumb.

“Do you think you can handle it?” Arthur says. “A lot will depend on you.”

Merlin bites his lip and looks at the ground. “No pressure, then.”

The wind blows warm and ruffles Merlin’s hair. Merlin looks up at him and his eyes flash gold, brilliant and burning in the light of the sun. He’s so beautiful and Arthur’s filled with something huge and grateful and powerful. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. They’re starting something that they can’t predict the outcome of, but it doesn’t seem so daunting and impossible and scary when he looks at Merlin.

“I’m not scared of you, Lord Emrys,” Arthur says, and he means every single word. “I’ll never be scared of you.”

Merlin’s smile is brilliant as he reaches out, settling the little magic dragon on Arthur’s shoulder where it nibbles at the seam of his jacket. Merlin traces Arthur’s jawline with his finger.

“And I believe in you, Captain Pendragon. Or is it General? It should be General. That’s higher than Captain, right?”

“You’re obsessed.”

Arthur wraps his fingers around Merlin’s wrist, holding his hand there against his jaw, laughing softly into his palm, and lets the burning ache behind his lungs—so long stifled—flare and burn inside of him. Merlin takes a shaky breath and a small yes escapes his lips, his eyes fixed on Arthur, full of hope, and love and adoration. And even if there’s a part of him that shakes and trembles under the force of Merlin’s gaze, Arthur only tightens his fingers around Merlin’s and doesn’t look away.

The sun shines bright over the landscape, the burning mess of the world. Merlin turns his face to the sky, says Kilgharrah with a smile and Arthur looks up as a brief shadow passes quickly over them to leave them in the light once more. And for the first time in Arthur’s life, the sight of the great winged beast gives him hope.