Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Like most children, Arthur has a monster.

Every child in Camelot keeps one somewhere. Some hide theirs beneath the bed, others in the wardrobe. But Arthur's monster is grander than these. It lives beneath the whole of the castle, in the very roots of Camelot—and this, he is quite certain, is why it is the worst monster of all.

He was small then. When he would not sleep, when he kicked off the blankets demanding another story and then another, the maidservants leaned close and lowered their voices.

Hush now, they said. Hush, or the beast below will hear you.

They told him how, far beneath the floors, past the kitchens and the cellars, there was a door. And behind the door, a stair. At the bottom of the stair, in a darkness so old it had forgotten there was ever any light, there was something chained.

What is it? the little prince asked.

A beast, they answered. You must never go down there, my prince. The beast swallows little boys and gives back nothing, not so much as a shoe. Now sleep.

The lower vaults were forbidden, his father told him. You are not to go beneath the castle, Arthur.

So the beast became a nightmare of his childhood. He never touched the door to it, though he had to pass that stairway often; the corridor was the quickest way to the training yard, and Arthur was always going to the training yard. Each time, he kept to the far wall and did not look. The torches burned along the descent, one beneath the next, down and down. To Arthur it seemed less a stair than a throat. It seemed to breathe. He half believed that if he stood too long at its edge, it would tilt the whole world toward him and pour him down, and no one would ever find so much as a shoe.

He never set a single foot upon it—until the afternoon he was twelve.

It was a bright, idle afternoon. Arthur was playing hide-and-seek with the children of the court. There were perhaps a dozen of them, sons and daughters of the noble houses, and that day it fell to Leon to be the seeker.

Leon was sixteen, no longer a child. He was quick and had the beginnings of a man's steadiness. He always won. He found the others within the hour. And when he played against Arthur—this was the part Arthur could not stomach—Leon let him win.

Oh, he was clever about it. He never made it obvious. But Arthur saw. He saw how Leon's eyes slid past the very curtain he crouched behind; how the older boy always managed to be looking the wrong way at the right moment. It was done kindly. It was done because Arthur was the prince, and one did not catch the prince, one did not beat the prince.

Arthur hated it. Being handled, being spared, being handed a victory.

That day, he meant to win truly, so that even Leon would have to stand in the yard and own that the prince had beaten him fairly. He would find a hiding place so perfect that Leon would search until the light failed and find nothing at all.

In the courtyard, Leon pressed his face to the crook of his arm and began to count. His voice came muffled through the arches.

"One, two, three—"

At the sound, the children scattered, shrieking, laughing, their footsteps ringing down every passage.

Arthur ran along the long gallery, past the tapestries, past the tall windows full of afternoon. As he ran, he passed the broom cupboard by the servants' stair; he could not help but slow and grin.

There they were, three of the little ones, packed shoulder to shoulder, thinking themselves so well hidden. But the door would not quite shut. A fold of skirt was caught in it; a sleeve hung plainly out into the corridor; a bright hem showed beneath like a line of light. Arthur pressed his lips together to keep the laugh in. Fools, he thought. Leon will have them in a moment.

He would not be so stupid. He was a prince; he would do this properly.

It was then the thought came to him. The one place in all of Camelot that no seeker would ever think to search, because no one would ever go there.

Arthur stopped. He stood at the mouth of the west corridor. At its end was the low arch, and beyond the arch, the stair went down.

The torches burned along it as they always had, one below the next, down and down past the reach of the light. The dark waited at the bottom.

His heart knocked against his ribs. Leon will never think to look here, he told himself. No one will ever find me here.

Arthur swallowed. Then he lifted his chin, gathered his courage, and set his foot upon the first stair.

The walls were sweating. He kept one hand on the stone as he went down; the rock was slick beneath his palm, weeping, cold as a held coin in winter. The torches lit him only a little way; between one flame and the next, the dark closed over the stair. He heard nothing but his own footsteps, each fall echoing back, doubled and tripled, sent down the passage ahead and up the passage behind.

His heart knocked. It knocked so hard he fancied the beast might hear it. Calm down, he told his heart, but it would not.

At the bottom of the long stair, he came to the entrance of the gaol.

There was an iron gate, beside it a stool, and on the stool a guard. Asleep. His chin had sunk to his chest, his hands lay open in his lap, and he breathed slowly through his open mouth. Arthur stopped and looked at him, and something in him bristled. This was a soldier of Camelot? To sleep at his post? His father would have had the man whipped. For one hot moment, Arthur was minded to wake him and say so.

But then he thought: Perhaps no one has ever come. Perhaps in all the man's long years, no living soul has ever descended this stair. Perhaps the beast keeps its own door.

Arthur went soft on his feet. He stepped close behind the sleeping man, slipped past, around him, through the black gate, and down into the very roots of Camelot.

Below the gate, the way grew wilder. This was no place made by hands; it was a place the earth had made. The floor was slick as river-stone. Water fell from the long stone teeth that hung from the roof—tock, tock—into the dark, patient as a clock. Arthur had to go on hands and knees in places, scrambling, his palms scraped raw on the wet rock, until at last he hauled himself up over a lip of stone onto a broad, flat ledge. There he let himself breathe.

His breath came ragged and loud. A torch guttered in a bracket on the wall; Arthur took it down. He held it before him, turning it slowly. By its small, shaking light, he looked around at where he had come. The cavern was vast; the light did not reach the far walls. Arthur held up his little fire in all that dark and prayed he was not so unlucky as to meet the beast.

For a long while, there was nothing. Nothing but his own breath, going in and out, the only living sound in all that silence.

Ching.

A bright sound. Clean and sudden, a single note of metal, ringing out of the dark.

Arthur's heart leaped into his throat. Every story rose up at once and seized him. He did not think; he only ran. He turned to flee back the way he had come—and his foot caught on something in the dark, and he pitched forward.

He went down hard. His forehead cracked against the stone. The torch flew from his hand and clattered away, lying burning where it fell. Arthur lay still a moment, the breath knocked out of him. Then he pushed himself up, teeth bared, hissing, one hand pressed to the smarting place above his eye where a lump was already rising hot beneath the skin.

By the light of the fallen torch, he saw at last what had tripped him.

A chain lay across the floor of the cave, thick and black and heavy, each link as broad as his own hand. That was all. Only a chain. Arthur's fright curdled into temper—the quick, shame-fed temper of a boy who had frightened himself for nothing. He drew back his foot and kicked the chain as hard as he could.

And the chain moved.

Not only from his kick. It shifted, off in the dark beyond the torchlight, drawn by some hand he could not see. It gave again that same bright, clear note—ching—the very sound that had sent him running.

Arthur went quite still.

The fear was still there, cold in his belly. But over it, rising, came something else. He wanted to know. To find the truth.

He took up the torch again. His hand was steadier now.

Following the chain, Arthur went softly deeper into the cavern. The chain became his thread, leading him onward and down. At last it ran up onto a great broad platform of rock, higher than the rest. Arthur crept to the foot of a boulder at the platform's edge and crouched there, leaning out to see what it was that Camelot kept in the dark.

The chain ran out across the stone. And there, where the last of the heavy iron lay coiled, it was wound about—

An ankle. Pale, thin, small. Wound round and round with black iron. A child's ankle.

Arthur could not breathe. He looked, and looked, and could not make it be anything else. It was a child.

He wore no shoes; his feet were bare on the cold, wet stone. He wore only a rag of old linen, wrapped about him and knotted. He was small—smaller than Arthur, surely not yet ten years old, a little scrap of a boy folded there on the great dark platform. His hair was black and curled, tangled past all combing, falling across half his face so that Arthur could not see him whole. His skin was white—so white. Whiter than anything Arthur had ever seen, white as the underside of a mushroom, white as a thing that had never in its life been touched by the sun. So white that here, in all this drowning dark, it seemed to hold a faint pale light of its own.

You must never go down there, my prince. The beast swallows little boys and gives back nothing, not so much as a shoe.

The maidservants had said that to him.

Here, at the very bottom of the swallowing dark, was the swallowed boy.

He had no shoes at all.

Arthur was struck dumb. For a long moment he could only crouch behind his stone and stare.

Then he lifted the torch. And he went to the boy.

"Who are you?" he asked. His voice came out small in all that dark.

The boy said nothing. He sat on the cold stone with the great chain coiled about his ankle and watched Arthur come, still as still, his tangled hair fallen across half his face.

"Why are you here?" Arthur asked.

Still nothing. Arthur crossed the last of the ground between them and stopped before him, close now, close enough to see. Beneath the long dark fringe of hair, he found the boy's eyes.

They were blue. Blue as the sea he had seen once—deep and clear, far too beautiful a thing to be found down here in the mud and the dark, so beautiful that for a breath Arthur forgot to be afraid and only looked.

"Who are you?" he asked again, gentler now.

The boy looked up at him. His mouth opened a little, as though he meant at last to speak. Arthur waited, watching those extraordinary eyes, waiting for the boy to tell him his name and how he had come to be here and who could have done so terrible a thing—

But no word came. The boy's lips parted and stayed parted. From the corner of that half-open mouth, a thread of spittle ran down and dripped. The blue eyes went bright and eager. They left Arthur's face, dropped, and settled, fastening upon Arthur's pocket. The boy licked his lips. He swallowed, his thin throat working. He looked at the pocket the way a starving thing looks at meat.

Arthur remembered the maid catching him at the door, tucking something into his pocket that morning. For later, my lord.

Strawberries. New-picked, the first of the season.

He dug into his pocket and brought them out.

The boy's eyes went wide. They kindled; they shone. His whole small, pale face woke and gathered around the little red things in Arthur's palm. Arthur moved his hand slowly to the side, and the boy's head followed it, turning, tracking the fruit. Arthur moved it back; the head came back. The boy was caught, wholly and hopelessly caught, and knew nothing in that moment but the strawberries.

Arthur felt something in his chest turn over, something that was almost a laugh.

"Do you want them?" he asked.

The boy nodded hard, up and down, his tangled curls bouncing, his eyes never once leaving the fruit.

Arthur smiled. He held out his hand. The boy took a strawberry in his thin white fingers, put it into his mouth, and swallowed it whole.

"Slowly, " Arthur said. "There's more. "

He fished another from his pocket, and another. The boy took them one by one and crammed them in, one after the next after the next, until his cheeks were round and full and he could hold no more. His mouth was stuffed and working, and his blue eyes creased and curved and shut with the pure animal gladness of it—two happy half-moons in that pale face.

Arthur sat down. Right there beside the boy on the platform of stone. The rock was cold beneath him, cold and damp, seeping through his fine clothes. He had come to the deepest, darkest, wettest, most forbidden place in the whole of his father's kingdom.

Yet watching this strange child gobble down strawberries in the torchlight, cheeks bulging, eyes shining, so wholly and stupidly happy over so small a thing—Arthur felt the smallest and most unaccountable warmth somewhere beneath his ribs.

"I expect Rhys will be pleased, " Arthur said, mostly to himself, watching the boy work through the last of the fruit. "That someone likes his strawberries so much. He grows them, you know. He's very particular about them. " He picked a stray leaf from his sleeve and flicked it away. "By the way—I'm Arthur. Prince of Camelot. "

The boy turned his head. He had swallowed the whole great cheekful at last, and now he looked at Arthur with those bright, wet blue eyes, shining in the torchlight.

"Who are you?" Arthur asked. Then he sighed and answered his own question with a small, rueful shake of the head. "Oh—I forgot. You can't speak. "

The boy lifted a thin white hand and reached toward Arthur's forehead.

The touch, light as it was, landed squarely on the sore place. Arthur winced before he could help it. At once a fierce, hot mortification washed over him—because it was so feeble, so entirely beneath a prince, to have frightened himself and fallen flat on his face in the dark. He hoped the boy had not seen it.

"Oh, that, " he said quickly. "That's a wound. From training. You know. Knight's training. " He warmed to it. "I took that fighting a giant. "

The boy rolled his eyes. It was quite plain he did not believe a word of it.

"It's true, " Arthur insisted. "Well… not a giant, exactly. But a man. A very large man, much bigger than me. I've been trained to kill since birth. "

The boy laughed. It came out of him bright and sudden. "And when did they start training you to be a prat?"

Arthur blinked.

"Oh, so you can talk. "

Somehow it became the most delightful thing that had happened this whole strange afternoon. Arthur laughed too. "I thought you were deaf and dumb. "

The boy's mouth pulled down into a sulk. He humphed, shuffled round on his backside, dragging the great chain with him, and turned his narrow shoulders squarely on Arthur.

"You can't blame me for that, " Arthur said. "I asked you three times who you were and you wouldn't tell me. "

The boy kept his back to him.

"Oh, " said Arthur. "Unless… you haven't got a name?"

There was a furious little huff from the narrow shoulders. Then, grudgingly, thrown back over one of them: "…I'm Merlin. "

"Merlin?" Arthur considered it. "Isn't that a little bird?"

"It's a falcon!" Merlin whipped round to protest, cracking his head clean into Arthur's.

Arthur's forehead, already bruised, met Merlin's skull with a solid, sickening thunk. The pain went off behind his eyes like a struck bell. "Ow—ow—Merlin!" he cried, both hands flying up to clutch his head. "It was only a joke, you didn't have to murder me for it!"

Merlin was clutching his own head and howling right back. "You murdered me! Is your dollophead made of stone?"

Arthur rubbed the throbbing place and glared. "You can't speak to a prince like that!"

Merlin sat back on his heels, folded his hands very properly in his lap, and said, in a tone of exquisite politeness: "All right. Is your dollophead made of stone, my lord?"

Arthur was speechless. Rubbing his aching head, it occurred to him that perhaps this insolence, this bottomless cheek, was exactly why the boy had been chained up beneath the castle. It would serve him right.

Merlin reached out and took Arthur's face in both his thin white hands. Leaning in, kneeling, bending close—before Arthur had the least idea what was happening, he watched those pink full lips come down and press to his forehead, right against the sore and swollen place.

"What are you doing?" Arthur asked.

"Hold still, " said Merlin.

He opened his mouth, and Arthur felt the boy's tongue against his skin, warm and soft, licking gently at the hurt. It tickled. It was warm. This close, Arthur could smell the sweetness on Merlin's breath, the ripe red scent of strawberries.

Where Merlin's tongue and lips had touched, the pain began, impossibly, to ease. It melted away as though it had never been. In its place rose a warmth, a deep and spreading comfort that started at the hurt and ran down through him to somewhere beneath his heart. Arthur forgot to pull away; he simply knelt there and let Merlin lick and kiss his forehead, wrapped round and round in that sweetness, in the smell of Merlin himself…

Arthur could not have pulled away, and did not want to. Only when Merlin let him go did he come back to himself and understand what had happened.

He lifted a hand and touched his own forehead. He pressed. No pain. No tenderness. He pressed harder, hardly believing it, but the bruise was gone.

A bruise like that did not heal in the space of a breath. Even Gaius would have bound it in poultices and made him wear them for days before the ache would fade. Arthur had trained for years; he had taken his knocks and watched them go slowly, day by day, the way all hurts go. This was not the way. This was not the natural order of things.

This was sorcery. Wicked, forbidden—magic.

Merlin had drawn back, retreating a few steps into the shadow at the platform's edge. From there he watched Arthur, still and wary, waiting… as though he knew exactly what came next.

Arthur stared at him. In the shadow he could not make out the boy's face. He swallowed. Then he lifted the torch and took a step forward.

Merlin took a step back. The chain dragged heavy across the stone, chng, the iron speaking on his thin ankle.

Arthur took another step; Merlin took another back.

Only then did Arthur fully understand why there was a child chained beneath the roots of Camelot. Arthur was young. He had never been allowed to look upon a real sorcerer. In Uther's mouth they were always terrible things, evil made flesh; and so they had always been in Arthur's own imagining—bad and cruel. Never—never once—had he pictured anything like a thin, pale little boy who called a prince a prat and then healed his hurt with soft kisses.

Merlin backed against the wall. There was nowhere left to go. Arthur came on, the torch coming with him, and at last the light fell full upon the boy's small, round face. His eyes were so blue—bluer than the sapphires Arthur had seen.

"Aren't you afraid of me?" Merlin's voice shook. His whole thin body shook.

Arthur did not know how to answer.

There was a voice inside him that said: Of course you should be. He is a sorcerer. Every sorcerer is evil. Every one of them is wicked and not to be borne.

But when Merlin's magic had wrapped itself around him, there had been only a boundless and unhesitating kindness.

So what Arthur said was: "No. I'm not. "

Merlin smiled.

His whole face lit with it, his eyes gone bright and shining. Arthur understood that in all the time he had known him—which was, perhaps, not yet a whole hour—this was the first time he had seen the boy truly smile, from somewhere deep and unguarded within.

And many years later, Arthur would look back and understand something else about that moment.

When he saw Merlin smile that first true smile, something in him had already made up its mind. That he would keep the smile safe. That he would guard it, and the boy it belonged to, for as long as ever he lived.

Arthur won the game that day. Leon searched until the sun set, he gave it up, and Arthur was never found.

But it was not the winning that made Arthur glad. What made him glad was that from that day he had a secret friend, Merlin.

He would sooner spend a whole afternoon slipped away into the dark of the gaol with Merlin than pass a single hour in the sunlit yard with the children of the court. The noble children flattered him. They watched their words around him and bowed their little heads and treated him always, always, as the Prince. Merlin was different. Merlin did not care two figs that he was a prince. Merlin would bicker with him for a solid quarter of an hour over nothing whatever—would even, on occasion, be quite genuinely furious with him for having eaten the last strawberry.

"That one was mine, " Merlin said, glaring, as Arthur licked the red from his thumb.

"You'd already had six. "

"I'd had five. "

"Six. I counted. "

"You can't count. You're a prince; you have people to count for you. " Merlin folded his arms. "That one was mine and you knew it was mine, and you ate it anyway, because you're a prat, and the meanest boy in the world. "

"I'm the only boy who comes down here at all, " Arthur pointed out. "So I'm also the kindest boy in the world. By default. "

"You're the only boy who comes down here because everyone else has the good sense not to. "

"You mean everyone else is afraid of the dark. "

"I mean everyone else doesn't eat other people's strawberries!"

Arthur looked at Merlin, huffing and furious, his full lips stained red with the juice of the fruit, and he privately resolved that next time he would bring enough. Enough to fill Merlin right up, so many strawberries the boy could not finish them.

So on the next day he went to the strawberry garden early, picked them himself, choosing the biggest and the ripest ones, filling his pockets, imagining all the while how wide Merlin's eyes would go when he saw them, and how he would smile.

He passed two knights on his way, talking low together, and he slowed without quite meaning to.

"The king's ridden out to war again, then?"

"Aye. Set off yesterday. He'll be at the front by now, I should think. "

"God grant it's not a bloody one. "

"The knights of Camelot don't lose. " A pause. "And besides... you're forgetting. The king's still got that. " The knight dropped his voice. "That thing. "

"Aye, " the other said, quieter still. "The beast…"

Arthur did not understand it, did not stop to. His hands were full of strawberries, his heart was full of Merlin's smile, he hurried on, down and down, over the weeping rock, up onto the great platform.

Merlin was not there.

The chain lay open on the stone. The iron ring had been opened wide, it was empty, cold, coiled where it was dropped. Merlin was gone. There was no one on the platform.

It was several days before Arthur saw the boy again.

He was curled upon the stone, small and still, seeming to be sleeping. Arthur crept close. He cleared his throat, softly.

Merlin heard him. He stirred, and pushed himself up from the stone. His hair was worse than ever—a proper bird's nest, tangled every way at once—whether it was a trick of the torchlight or not, Arthur thought his face had gone paler.

"You weren't here, the other day, " Arthur said. "So I had to eat all the strawberries by myself. "

"Oh, " was all Merlin said.

"Oh? Just—oh?" Arthur was startled. Any other day Merlin would have been on him with both fists before the sentence was out. "Who are you? What have you done with Merlin?"

Merlin said nothing. He bowed his head and looked at his own fingers.

"All right, " Arthur said, more gently. "I'm only teasing. " He crossed to him and reached carefully into his tunic, drawing out a whole small basket. "I saved them for you. They're all yours. "

Merlin lifted both hands and took up a perfect red berry, setting it against his lips, and bit, small and careful, into it.

"Sweet, " he murmured. "So sweet… Arthur. "

Arthur moved round behind him. From his pocket he took a silver comb, and he began, gently, to work at the tangle of Merlin's hair.

He had never done such a thing in his life. He had never combed anyone's hair—even combed his own, for there had always been servants to see to it. But Merlin looked like such a ragged, unminded little thing; that if only he were cleaned and combed and set to rights he would surely be lovely—and then, perhaps, Arthur might contrive to let Uther see him. See what a dear and good boy he really was. His father would surely be moved, and let him go.

It was hard work. The hair was snarled, knotted upon itself, clotted here and there with dried mud from the cave floor. Arthur took it in sections, holding each strand near the root so as not to pull, teasing the knots loose a little at a time. Where the comb caught he stopped and worked it free with his fingers, patient, careful, so as not to hurt. Some of the tangles were so tight he had to pick them apart thread by thread. He smoothed each piece as he finished it, laying it down flat and clean against the rest, and moved on to the next, and the dark curls came slowly right beneath his hands—no longer a nest but hair, soft and black and fine, finer than he would have guessed, springing gently into its curl now that the mud and the knots were gone.

Merlin sat still. He did not squirm, or complain. He only sat, and ate his strawberries one by one, and let himself be tended.

"Where did you go, the other day?" Arthur asked as he combed.

"…Sometimes they…" Merlin's mouth was full of strawberry; the words came muffled. "…take me out. "

"Oh—you mean the knights?"

Merlin was quiet a moment. Then he nodded.

"That makes sense. You do need more sun. " Arthur nodded too, satisfied. "Knights are good men. "

Merlin said nothing to that. He only went on steadily eating from the basket.

Soon the basket was empty, and Merlin's hair was done.

Arthur came round in front to survey his work. Merlin's face was still grubby, smudged here and there with the mud of the cave; his hair, for all Arthur's care, still stood up in one or two obstinate places. But on the whole it was well, very well. For the first time Arthur truly saw Merlin's face, saw it whole and clear, no longer hidden behind that dark and matted fringe.

Merlin was beautiful.

For a moment Arthur could not think what to say.

"Are they?" Merlin asked. His blue eyes looked straight into Arthur's.

"…Well. Some of them are snobs, I'll grant you that, " Arthur admitted. "But most of them are good. Sir Gareth teaches me the sword. And Sir Pellas—he's a wonder on a horse. " He rubbed the back of his neck. "I hope one day I'll be as brave as they are. As fearless. "

"You will be. You're a good person, Arthur. " Merlin looked at him—straight into his eyes—Arthur felt somehow the heat climb into his face.

"Well, " he said, looking away. "I'm not sure I can get used to you being so honest all of a sudden. "

He waited for it—don't flatter yourself, clotpole—the way it always came. But it did not come. Merlin had gone quiet. Arthur turned back to look at him.

"Merlin? Is everything okay?"

Merlin lurched forward and threw his arms around him.

His body was small, and soft, and light. Arthur did not know what to do with his hands.

"Hold me, " Merlin said, against his neck, his face hidden there so that Arthur could not see it. "Please. "

The small voice was so terribly sad, Arthur could not bear it, he did not know what else on earth to do but hold him. He put his arms around the thin shaking frame. The bird-light bones curled into him, Merlin buried his face deeper against Arthur's shoulder as though he would climb inside him if he could.

For a long while neither spoke. Then, muffled against Arthur's shoulder, in a small and shaking voice, Merlin asked:

"…Am I a good person?"

Something in Arthur's chest clenched tight.

He did not know why Merlin should be so sad. He did not know why his own heart should ache so at the asking of it.

But he tightened his arms and held the boy closer, there in the wet and freezing dark of the gaol, at the very bottom of the world... two warm hearts beating close, so close...

The year Arthur turned sixteen, he was at last allowed to leave off the wooden sword and train with true steel.

Leon was his partner. Leon held back, as he always did, but this was no longer the game of children—the blades were real.

Arthur rushed in, thrust; Leon turned it aside. Arthur pressed forward again. The weight of the new sword was strange in his hand, heavier than anything he was used to. He fought to govern it, to keep the force of each stroke in check as he traded blows with Leon. It was in the one instant that Leon's blade came round that Arthur, unbalanced by the unfamiliar iron, did not get clear in time.

"Sire!" Leon cried out, and in the same breath Arthur felt a searing line of fire open across his chest. The next moment the ground came up to meet him, and he knew no more.

The cut ran clean across his chest, but by good fortune it took only the flesh; it was not deep. Gaius stitched it closed. All the same, Arthur was bound up in bandage upon bandage upon bandage, and though he protested loud that it was nothing at all, he was made to rest a whole week together.

At the week's end, before the bandages were so much as off him, Arthur slipped away, running down to the gaol.

A whole week he had gone without Merlin. He had missed him more than he could say.

"Merlin!" Arthur called the moment he came into the gaol.

At once he heard the great clanking crash of the chain. Merlin came running to him, as best he could, though the heavy iron dragged at his right foot and made him stumble and lurch with every step.

"Prat! You didn't come for a whole week! Where were you?" Merlin said, and there was temper in it.

"Well, that's… a long story. "

"Then make it a short one. "

"All right. " Arthur put his tongue out at him and began, in a mumbling, roundabout sort of way, to tell how he had been valiantly and gloriously wounded in single combat.

Merlin grew more horrified the more he heard. He wanted to see the wound; Arthur would not let him; and it ended with Merlin bearing him bodily to the ground and sitting down astride his chest. Arthur, being hurt to begin with, and Merlin being now, unaccountably, taller than he was—which was deeply unfair, for when they first met Merlin had been a small, short scrap of a boy, and now, at fourteen, he had gone all long in the arm and leg—

Arthur could do nothing but lie there, letting Merlin pull loose the laces of his shirt and bare the bandage across his chest.

"It only looks bad, " Arthur said.

"Idiot. What an idiot. " Merlin's hands were shaking as they settled against Arthur's chest. Slowly he unwound the bandage, until the stitched line of the cut lay open to the torchlight.

"Oh, god, " Merlin breathed, sucking in his breath. Arthur felt the boy's hands move over his chest, tracing, and all at once a strange heat rushed through the whole of him.

"I told you. It only looks bad. "

"This is not what looks bad means, Arthur, " Merlin said. "This is what is bad means. Literally. Who did this to you?"

"Leon, " said Arthur.

Merlin's eyes went dark on the instant, so dark that if a look could kill, Leon would already have been a dead man. Arthur added hastily, "He feels terrible about it. It was my own fault, I ran onto his blade. It's nothing to do with him. "

"You ran onto his blade? Are you stupid?" Merlin cried. "And how could you go running all over the place with a wound like this?!"

"Well… Gaius did forbid me to move about, or train, but—"

"No buts!" Merlin was off scolding again. "I think this Gaius is exactly right. You should be forbidden to move about. Forbidden for good, ideally—"

"But I missed you, " Arthur said, before he could stop himself.

Merlin froze.

For a long while he said nothing at all. And then, at last, very low, he murmured a single word.

Arthur read it off the shape of his lips. Prat.

"Since you're a sorcerer, " Arthur teased, "can't you just heal me? A bit of convenient magic, maybe?"

"Oh, good lords, " said Merlin, feigning astonishment. "Who could have guessed the Prince of Camelot would be the first to commit treason?"

"So what of it? Are you going to report me? A sorcerer reporting the prince?" Arthur laughed; the laugh pulled at the wound, and his brow creased with the sudden hurt of it. "Shit… no, but really, it does hurt. Can't you honestly do something, Merlin?"

Merlin shifted his ankle; the chain sounded. "I can't. It's cold iron. It holds my power down, " he said.

Arthur rolled his eyes. "That's really a great help. Thanks very much. " And winced again.

Merlin considered a moment. "I think I've got an idea. " He bent down, dark hair falling forward, brushing Arthur's skin. Arthur felt the light and careful touch of those soft lips against his chest.

Then the magic came, rising up from wherever Merlin's mouth rested and spreading outward beneath his skin, warm and slow, like the first thaw of spring reaching down into frozen ground. Merlin licked gently along the wound, following the line of the stitches, pressing small kisses to the torn and knotted flesh. Everywhere his mouth passed, the searing feeling went out of it, until it no longer hurt at all.

Arthur lay very still and let it happen. His own heart was beating under Merlin's mouth, so fast and hard that Merlin must have been able to feel it too. The warmth pooled beneath his ribs, spreading down his arms to the tips of his fingers. There was such an aching, wholehearted kindness that Arthur's throat went tight. He had to look away, up into the dark of the cavern roof, and blink hard.

Beneath Merlin's lips the wound drew itself closed, the stitches loosening over skin gone smooth and new.

Feeling everything Merlin did, Arthur's chest rose and fell faster and faster; his breath came ragged; he was warm all over. There was only one name in the whole of his head—

Merlin, Merlin, Merlin, Merlin...

Just as Arthur was about to say it aloud—

Merlin lifted his head and climbed down off him. "There, " he said.

"God, Merlin…" Arthur ran a hand over the fully healed skin, marvelling. "How did you do that? Didn't you say your magic was held down?"

Merlin looked a little shy. "…Well. I think there's some strange power in the blood of my kind. Like—being able to heal a wound in an instant. That kind of thing. "

"So you've got magical spit, " Arthur said.

Merlin smacked him round the back of the head.

Arthur settled himself down with his head pillowed on Merlin's knee. The stone was cold, but Merlin's lap was warm, his fingers combing slowly through Arthur's hair. Arthur shut his eyes, pretending he had already fallen asleep.

Above him, Merlin grumbled on. He had a great deal to say.

"I'm still furious with this Leon bloke, though. He hurt you. I think I'll punch him. Hard. "

The grumbling slowed. The fingers slowed with it. And at the very last, so quietly that Arthur nearly missed it, Merlin said:

"…if I ever get to meet him. "

He said it small, and wistful, in a way that made Arthur's chest ache worse than the sword wound. As if Merlin had said the words to himself a thousand times before. If I ever get out. If I ever see the sun. If I ever walk on grass, or feel the rain... Just like an ordinary boy.

You will, Arthur promised himself, without opening his eyes. I'm going to get you out of here. I swear it.

That night Arthur lay in his feather bed, restless. He wanted to outrun the memory of lips upon his chest, but the feelings kept circling until sleep finally dragged him under.

In the dream he was still in his bed, yet the air was sweeter. There was a weight across his hips, alive and yielding and impossibly real. Pale thighs bracketed his own; a body, slender and moonlit, straddled him. Dark curls, black as ink and wild with curls, tumbled forward in a shifting veil that hid the face above from view. Arthur's hands rose without thought to span the narrow waist, fingers pressing into warm skin as the figure began to move.

The first slow roll of those hips stole the breath from his lungs. He felt himself taken, sheathed completely, buried to the root in tight, slick heat that clenched around him. The body above him sank and rose again, the motion of the waist a sinuous twist that sent sparks racing the length of Arthur's spine.

Each time the body sank down and took him fully, the pale skin of his stomach shifted. A faint shape pushed outward from within. The thick ridge of Arthur's cock pressing against the inner wall, visible just beneath the surface. The taut skin of the fle showing exactly how deep Arthur was, how completely he filled him.

Arthur could not look away. His hips lifted of their own accord, meeting the downward press, driving deeper until he felt the give of the very core of that pliant body. The figure rode him, curls swinging, breath coming in soft, broken sounds that might have been his name. Arthur's fingers tightened on the slim hips, guiding, urging, pulling the body down harder, faster. The wet sound of their joining filled the dream.

He still could not see the face. Only the suggestion of it beneath the dark hair: the line of a throat arched back, the flash of white teeth caught on a lower lip, the occasional glint of eyes—blue, the most beautiful blue in all the world—when the curls parted for an instant. Those eyes seemed to know him.

Pleasure coiled tighter, low and unbearable. Arthur thrust upward harder, chasing the heat, the clench, the way that body welcomed and milked and owned him. The figure leaned forward, bracing slender hands upon his chest, curls brushing his skin like silk. The movements grew wilder, more desperate, the pale belly quivering with each impact. Arthur felt the edge rushing toward him, unstoppable, a storm gathering at the base of his spine and spreading outward until his breath broke.

Release tore through him. His cock pulsed deep inside, spilling in long waves, filling the body above him until it leaked out around the join of their bodies, slick between them. At the exact instant of his peak, when his back bowed off the bed and his mouth opened on a ragged cry, the dark curls were swept aside at last. The face resolved, beloved and shining with tears.

Those eyes, wide and dark with pleasure, the familiar features flushed and open, the mouth shaping Arthur's name.

"Merlin—"  

The name tore from Arthur's throat as the last pulses wracked him.

He woke to the sound of his own voice, hoarse and broken, and to the hot, wet jerk of his hard-on against his belly. Shuddering ropes across his skin, his chest, the fine linen sheets, as the dream-image of Merlin's blue eyes seeing him at the moment of surrender burned behind his eyelids. The pleasure went on and on, wringing him dry.

When it finally ebbed, Arthur lay stunned. Slowly, awareness returned, the damp stickiness cooling on his skin. He lifted a trembling hand and touched his own belly. Shame rose swift and vicious, and beneath it, was a longing so fierce it left him breathless.

He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, but the dream image would not fade.

The year Arthur turned seventeen, Leon rode to war. Arthur wanted to ride with him.

He was a knight now, or near enough—he had trained, had bled for it. Why should he be kept from the field? Was it only because he was the prince? He wanted to fight for Camelot as much as any man who wore the royal cape; more, perhaps, for it was his kingdom, or would be.

So he went to his father, he asked, and his father said no.

"Why?" Arthur demanded. "Give me one reason that isn't because I say so. "

"Because you are my son and my heir, " Uther said, "I will not risk you in a purge that lesser men can do. That is reason enough. "

"Lesser men. " Arthur's laugh was short. "You mean men. You'll send them to die but you won't send me. Father, it's called arrogance. "

Uther's face darkened. "Have a care. "

"You're arrogant... No, you're scared, " Arthur pressed on, the words had been damming up in him for years. "You're scared all the time... It's why you rule the way you do. You lock the sorcerers away, or you burn them, every one, and never once stop to ask what they are... who they are! Whether there's a single one among them who's done no wrong at all—"

"Enough. "

"—you don't know them!" Arthur's voice cracked. "You've never wanted to know them! You decided long ago that all of them are monsters, and you've never let yourself find out otherwise, because if even one of them turned out to be good... then everything you've done would be—"

"You dare. " Uther was on his feet now, his face had gone white, there was something terrible working behind his eyes. "You dare stand in my hall and question the way I have kept this kingdom safe. Do you know what walks the world with magic in its hands? You know nothing, boy—nothing of what I have seen, nothing of what I have lost—"

"Then tell me!"

"—and you will not lecture your king on mercy!" Uther's fist came down upon the arm of his throne. "Are you questioning my rule? Do you set yourself up now to judge how Camelot is governed—you, who have not ruled a single day?"

"I'm questioning whether it's just, " Arthur said, and he did not back down.

"It is not for you to weigh what is just!" the king roared. "It is for you to obey. " He turned from Arthur, his voice went cold and flat. "Guards. The prince is confined to his chambers. He will remain there until he remembers whose word is law in Camelot. "

And that was the end of it. Hands closed upon Arthur's arms, he was marched from the hall, his eyes stinging, every unsaid thing burning in his throat.

A few days later, Leon came home from the war, and it was Leon who let Arthur out.

The bolt drew back, the door opened, and Leon was there.

Arthur clapped him on the shoulder, asking him how the battle had gone.

Leon smiled, a strange, bitter smile. "It went well, " he said. "It went… too well. "

Arthur heard the something under the words.

"Leon. What is it?"

Leon was quiet a moment.

"Until today, " he said slowly, "I don't think I understood what kingdom I've been living in. That it isn't... that it isn't what it looks like, from the outside. " He wet his lips. "Do you remember, when we were small, the stories the maids used to tell? To frighten us? That there was a monster living under the castle. A beast that would eat you up if you weren't good?" He gave a short, humourless breath. "I always thought they made it up. Just a tale to keep us in our beds. "

Arthur went very still.

For five years now, since the afternoon he was twelve, he had gone down into the roots of the castle nearly every day of his life. He knew what was down there. He knew, better than anyone living, that there was no terrible beast in the dark. There was nothing down there at all but...

But the only boy he loved best in all the world.

"It's real, " Leon said, his voice had dropped, gone hushed and unsteady. "Under the castle. There is a monster. The worst... the most terrible thing you could ever imagine. It's down there, sire. It's real. I've seen it. "

Arthur ran.

Down through the castle, down and down the way he had gone a thousand times, at the foot of the long stair he flung a sleep-smoke at the guard the way he always had. Then Arthur was past him, running still, calling out into the dark as he went, his voice breaking on it, over and over:

"Merlin! Merlin!"

He scrambled up the weeping rock, hauling himself onto the great platform. He followed the chain, that thick, heavy, sickening black chain... running the length of it, running toward its end, toward the boy who must be there, who had always been there, who had to be there—

There was no boy.

What Arthur saw, when at last he saw it, stopped him where he stood.

A red, vast and terrible dragon. Lying upon the platform with its great body coiled, the chain ran up and closed about the claw of its right hind leg. Its breath came fast and shallow. Low, dreadful, resonating moans of pain that shook the very stone.

He went toward it. With every step the thick, hot, iron smell of blood grew stronger. The creature's eyes were shut. The stone beneath its great body was dark and wet, pooling out from under it, a spreading black lake of blood.

The creature opened its eyes.

They were golden, and the moment they found Arthur the pupils shrank to slits. The great beast flinched, struggling, dragging one broken wing up across its own face, hiding, as if covering its eyes then Arthur would not be able to see it.

Arthur saw, over the top of that lifted wing, that the wing itself was a ruin. Torn, scarred and broken, the great membrane rent through in several places.

Arthur reached out. He laid his hand upon the broken wing.

The dragon's vast body shuddered under his touch.

"Merlin, " Arthur said. His voice was scarcely a voice at all. "Is that... is that you?"

The dragon made a low, broken sound, the most desolate sound Arthur had ever heard a living thing make.

It struggled to rise. Gathering its great body, it heaved upward, trying to lift itself, trying to get away from him. The long neck buckled and came down hard against the stone with a crash, and even then, it tried to drag itself away, hauling its ruined weight across the blood-slick rock inch by useless inch, as if it would crawl into the deepest black of the cavern sooner than let Arthur look at it one moment longer.

The lake of blood spread wider on the stone.

"Stop—stop, don't move, " Arthur said, flinging his arms about the great neck and holding on, pressing his whole body against it. "You're hurt. Stop moving. Let me see. Let me see where you're hurt. "

The dragon stopped struggling. Its sides heaved, its breath rattling and wet. Arthur held on, feeling the great body shaking.

Gently, Arthur reached up, taking the edge of the broken wing where it lay drawn across the dragon's great face, and eased it aside.

He saw the eyes. Golden. Wide. And full of fear and grief. Arthur knew them. He would know them anywhere, in any shape, at the bottom of any darkness in the world. He had seen this look before. He had held the small pale boy who wore it.

It was the same look. It was the very same. The fear that said: now that you have seen what I am, you will leave. No one could love a thing like this.

Arthur's throat closed. For a moment he could not speak at all; he could only look into those enormous frightened golden eyes and feel his heart breaking.

"Oh, " Arthur breathed. "Oh, Merlin. "

He wanted to hold him. He wanted to gather him up and hold every part of him the way he had long ago when a small pale boy pressed his face into the crook of his neck and begged to be held. But the dragon was too vast. Arthur was so small against it. There was no wrapping his arms around the whole of the boy he loved. He could only hold on to the great neck, only press himself against the red scaled hide and cling there, holding on with everything in him.

"Am I a good person, Arthur?"

The voice came low and rumbling out of the dragon's throat, and it was nothing at all like his Merlin's voice. That, more than anything, shattered Arthur's heart. From the great golden eyes, tears welled up, ran shining down over the scales.

Arthur was crying too. He could not stop it. He held his dragon, his Merlin, and he said it over and over.

"You are. You are. You are. "

"Aren't you afraid of me?" the dragon asked, the same question softly.

Arthur drew back a little. He looked into those enormous golden eyes, and he did not look away, did not flinch.

Then he leaned in, and kissed the dragon upon the mouth.

The mouth was huge. It was nothing like a boy's mouth; it was hard, cool, and armoured all over in great overlapping scales that shifted faintly under his lips. He could smell smoke and blood. It was the mouth of a monster.

Arthur pressed his lips to it, gently, closing his eyes.

It was Merlin. Arthur would know. In any shape it was, Arthur would love it just the same.

Arthur drew back the barest breath, so that his lips still nearly touched the cool scaled mouth, and he said:

"I love you, Merlin. "

The tears spilled hot from the golden eyes, steaming upon the cold stone, the vast red creature bowed its head against him, and Arthur held on, and held on, and did not let go.

Merlin was gravely hurt.

Now that Arthur could bring himself to look, in the guttering torchlight, at the whole of that great ruined body, he saw how bad it was.

The dragon's belly was nearly run through; there was a deep and horrible wound there, and it was from this that the blood came, welling out onto the stone and not stopping. The back was a lattice of gashes. The wings were worse, scarring over old scars, ruined so many times that Arthur could not tell the new hurts from the old. Along the great legs, all down the forelegs and the hind, the scales were seared and blistered. Burns. Burn upon burn upon burn.

This is what they did to him, Arthur thought, and the thought was a white blaze behind his eyes. When they took him out. They took him to war.

Merlin had not even the strength left to hold his human shape. Wounded past bearing, he lay here as what he truly was.

The dragon's breath came harder. It dragged in and out, wet and labouring, with a rattle in it that Arthur did not like at all. The great sides heaved and shuddered. The golden eyes were shut now.

Arthur knelt in Merlin's blood, his hands pressing helpless to a wound.

Merlin was dying, and Arthur did not know how to stop it.

There was only one thing Arthur could do.

He ran up the long stair, up through the castle to the physician's tower. He brought Gaius.

He believed the old physician would not let a patient die merely because that patient was a dragon.

When Gaius came at last into the cavern and saw what lay bleeding on the stone, he was struck utterly still. The lamp shook in his old hand. His face went grey.

"Please, " Arthur begged. "Please. Save him. "

"Forgive me, sire—I don't understand. " Gaius turned to stare at him. "How—how could you know him?"

"I'll explain everything later, " Arthur said. "He's my friend. I can't let him die. "

Gaius looked at him a long moment. Then he looked at the great golden eyes gone dim. He let out a long, heavy sigh.

"Perhaps this is simply destiny, " he murmured.

Gaius set down his lamp, opened his bag, took out his herbs, needles and linen, knelt down in the blood beside Merlin, and began to work.

The wounds were many and they were deep. Gaius took his time; one by one the terrible hurts were cleaned, closed, and bound. Merlin reverted to human form midway, sleeping heavily, his head come to rest against Arthur.

Gaius reached out and laid his hand upon Merlin's forehead. For a long moment he only looked at the sleeping face. "He looks so like you, " he murmured to himself. "Doesn't he. Balinor. "

"Who is Balinor?" Arthur asked.

"The boy's father. " Gaius did not take his eyes from Merlin. "A friend of mine, once. A Dragonlord. And... before the Purge, a friend of Uther's, too. "

"My father's?" Arthur could not believe it. He could not make the words fit the man he knew, the man who hated magic beyond all reason, who had kept a child chained in a lightless gaol beneath his own hall. That this man had once been the friend of a sorcerer seemed as impossible as the sun rising in the west.

"He was a brave man, and a great one, a good friend, " Gaius said gently. "His power was one of the very stones Camelot was built upon. It was with his help that Uther won so many of his wars, forged the kingdom you know today. " He was quiet a moment, choosing his words. "But magic is a two-edged blade, Arthur. It creates, it destroys, both at once. It made the victories on the battlefield. It made the kingdom strong. And it made—for Uther—the one thing he wanted above everything. It made him an heir. " He looked up. "It made you. "

"…Me?" Arthur said.

"Yes. The king went to the priestess of the Old Religion, and together they gave a barren queen a child. " Gaius's voice dropped. "But Uther did not understand that magic is never freely given. There is always a price. And the price for you was your mother's life. " He shook his head slowly. "It was too high a price. Higher than even Uther could bear. "

"No, " Arthur whispered. "No—that isn't... my father would never—"

"Arthur. Listen to me. " Gaius's hand came to rest on his shoulder. "I will not tell you Uther's choices were all wrong. There were sorcerers who grew drunk on their own power. That is why I stayed. Why I have served him all these years. But Balinor was not like me. Balinor could not forgive what Uther became. So he left. And Uther lost the greatest power he had ever wielded—"

Gaius stopped.

His eyes went wide. He turned, slowly, and looked down at the sleeping boy, at the small pale sorcerer bound in bandages. The colour drained from his face.

"Oh, " he breathed. "Oh, God have mercy. "

"What is it?" Arthur asked. "Gaius—what?"

"Perhaps, " Gaius said, very low, "he did not lose the power after all. Perhaps it was too great a thing for a man like Uther ever to let go. Perhaps, when the Dragonlord left, Uther simply… found it again—"

He said no more. He did not have to.

Arthur understood, and in that moment he hated his father as he had never hated anyone in all his life. He hated the hypocrisy, the selfishness of him, and every single thing he had done to the boy who now lay broken in Arthur's arms.

Gaius gathered his things and got stiffly to his feet. "I'll go back to the tower and see whether there is anything more that might save him, sire, " he said. He looked down at Arthur.

"I'll stay here, " Arthur said. "I'll stay with him. "

Arthur held him.

He sat on the cold stone with Merlin gathered against his chest.

After a long while, Merlin's eyes opened.

They found Arthur's face at once.

"... Arthur, " he said weakly.

"I'm here. " Arthur bent close over him. "I'm here. Gaius has gone for medicine. You're going to be all right. "

A ghost of the old wryness crossed Merlin's face. "You're—a terrible liar, " he whispered. "You always were. "

"And you're a terrible patient, " Arthur said, and his throat closed on it. "So we're well matched. "

Merlin's mouth curved, just barely. His hand stirred, lifted, trembling, and Arthur caught it in both of his and held it against his own chest, over his heart.

"Arthur, " Merlin said again. "I have to tell you. In case—in case I don't—"

"Don't, " Arthur said. "Don't say it like that. "

"Let me say it, prat. I've kept it long enough. " He drew a shallow breath; it cost him. "All these years. Every day, I waited for you. You were the one person in the whole world who... who didn't look at me like I was a thing in a cage. " His eyes glistened. "I love you. I've loved you since... since I don't even remember when. Since before I knew the word for it. "

Arthur could not speak for a moment. When he did, his voice broke straight down the middle.

"I love you too, " he said. "Merlin. I love you with my life. I'd say it every single day. I'd say it in the sun, somewhere you'd never have to be afraid again—" He pressed Merlin's hand harder to his heart. "I love you. Merlin, I love you. Don't you dare leave before I've had the chance to say it a thousand more times. "

Merlin smiled, truly smiled, the one Arthur had sworn in his heart he would keep safe forever.

Then his body seized.

Merlin arched in Arthur's arms, his back bowing, a raw sound tearing out of him, and his hand clamped down on Arthur's with sudden terrible strength and then went to fists, clenching, shaking. His eyes screwed shut. He convulsed again, and again, wracked with it, Arthur holding him helpless, seeing where the shudders ran: down toward the great iron ring locked about his ankle.

The cold iron. It was holding his power down. It was wringing him dry. It was killing him, choking off the power that might have healed him, and there was nothing in Merlin left to fight it with.

"No, " Arthur said. "No. " He tore his sword free.

He brought it down on the chain. Once, twice, the blade ringing off the black iron, not so much as scratching it. He hacked at it in a fury, roaring with the effort, but the cold iron did not break.

Arthur threw the sword down and seized the chain in his bare hands.

He hauled at it, wrapping the great links in his fists, pulling with everything he had. The iron bit into his palms, split the skin. His hands began to bleed, and still he pulled, the blood running down his wrists and slicking the chain, making it worse. He pulled harder until his hands were ruined and raw. The cold iron sat there, whole, utterly unmoved.

"Please, " Arthur sobbed, wrenching at it. "Please—break—please, just this once—"

Merlin gave one last shuddering cry. And then he went limp.

The seizing stopped all at once. His body slackened; his head lolled; his hand slipped and fell open against the stone. His eyes were shut. His breath—Arthur could not hear his breath.

"Merlin. " Arthur gathered him up, his own torn hands leaving red where they touched. "Merlin. No. No, no, no—stay, please, stay—"

Merlin went still in his arms.

For a terrible moment there was nothing. No breath, no movement, only the slack weight of him. Arthur's own torn hands left red smears across Merlin's chest as he gathered him closer, frantic.

"Merlin. Merlin, please—"

A shallow breath dragged in. Then another. Merlin's eyes fluttered open, unfocused at first, then finding Arthur's face.

"Ar... thur," he whispered.

"I'm here. I'm right here. " Arthur's voice cracked. "Just stay with me. "

Merlin's gaze dropped to Arthur's bleeding hands. With effort that made his whole body tremble, he lifted one shaking hand and cupped Arthur's ruined palms together. He brought them to his mouth.

His trembling lips touched the torn skin, then licked gently along the deepest gash.

Nothing happened. The wounds stayed open, bleeding into Merlin's mouth.

Merlin tried again. And again. Each time his tongue moved over the torn flesh with careful, desperate strokes, his breath hitching with the effort. Still nothing.

"Stop, " Arthur said, voice rough. "Merlin, stop. It won't work. "

Merlin didn't stop. Tears slipped from the corners of his eyes and mixed with the blood on Arthur's hands. He kept licking, kept pressing trembling kisses to the wounds that would not close, until a broken sound escaped him.

"I can't, " he whispered against Arthur's palm. "I can't... heal you anymore... "

His voice gave out. He was crying in earnest now, weak and quiet, shoulders shaking with it. Arthur couldn't bear the sight. He pulled Merlin tight against his chest, cradling the back of his head, bent down to kiss him.

The kiss was deep, desperate, tasting both their blood, indistinguishable now, Arthur's and Merlin's. Merlin made a small, broken sound into his mouth and kissed back as best he could.

When the kiss broke, Merlin's breath was shallow against Arthur's mouth. His trembling, weak hand rose and curled into the front of Arthur's tunic.

"Make me yours, " he whispered. "Prat. "

"No. " The word came out hoarse. "Merlin, you're... look at you. You can barely breathe. I won't... I won't hurt you. "

Merlin's fingers tightened, just barely. "Before I go… I want to be yours. Properly. I want you inside me... Please. "

Arthur's throat closed. Every instinct screamed to refuse. But Merlin's eyes were wet, there was desperation in them.

"I'll be careful, " Arthur's voice breaking. "So careful. If it hurts even a little, you tell me and I stop. "

Merlin nodded small.

Arthur gathered him up as gently as he could. Carrying him the short distance to the low stone platform at the centre of the cavern, and laid him down on it with infinite care. Merlin's head settled against the stone; his legs parted of their own accord when Arthur knelt between them.

Gaius had left a small jar of ointment among the supplies. Arthur uncorked it. Scooping some onto his fingers, warming it between them, then reached down.

He started with one finger, slow and slick, pressing in only when Merlin's body gave. Merlin gasped, head tipping back. Arthur watched his face the entire time as he worked the finger deeper, crooking it gently, spreading the ointment inside. Merlin was tight, so tight, and hot, Arthur had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep his own breathing steady.

"Still all right?" he asked.

Merlin nodded, eyes glassy. "More. "

Arthur added a second finger, even slower. He scissored them carefully, stretching, watching the way Merlin's pale stomach tightened and released. The iron chain clinked softly every time Merlin shifted. Arthur leaned in and kissed the inside of one trembling thigh, then the other.

He kept working him open with patient, thorough care, adding more ointment when he needed it, until three fingers moved easily inside Merlin's body and Merlin was making small, broken sounds that went straight through Arthur's chest. Only then did Arthur withdraw his hand, wipe it on his own thigh, and reach for the laces of his breeches.

He looked at Merlin one last time. Pale, wounded, beautiful, and wanting him.

"I love you, " Arthur braced one hand beside Merlin's head on the cold stone. With the other he guided himself, the head of his cock slick and pressing gently against Merlin's bottom. "I'm going to be so gentle with you. " He pushed in the barest fraction of an inch and stopped, watching Merlin's face.

Merlin's breath hitched. His body opened around Arthur, tight and hot and trembling. Arthur eased forward another slow inch, then another, stopping every time Merlin's breath caught.

It was nothing like the wet dream. This was slower, quieter, more heartbreakingly real. Every fraction felt like a gift Merlin was barely strong enough to give.

Arthur's bleeding hands left faint red prints on the stone as he held himself back, he's only seventeen, this was the first time he had ever been taste the boy he loved. His cock throbbed, veins pulsing hard. He wanted to move, to fuck him hard, to drive into Merlin with all the raw urgency. But he held himself. Be gentler, be slower.

When he was finally seated all the way inside, buried to the hilt in that tight, clenching heat, Arthur let out a broken sound. Merlin's body fluttered around him, for a moment it was perfect. Then Merlin's eyes rolled back. His body went slack, head tipping to the side. He had fainted.

"Merlin—" Arthur's voice cracked. He stayed perfectly still inside him, one hand coming up to cup Merlin's jaw. "Merlin, come back. Please. "

He leaned down and kissed the sharp line of Merlin's chin, then the soft skin just beneath it, then lower, along the column of his throat where the pulse still fluttered weakly.

Gentle, desperate kisses, tasting like sorrows.

Merlin stirred after a few long seconds, a small sound escaping him. His eyes fluttered open again.

Arthur searched his face, terrified. "Are you all right? Did I hurt you?"

Merlin blinked slowly. A faint, exhausted smile touched his mouth.

"I'm… happy, " he whispered. "Right now. With you inside me.... I can die happy. "

Arthur's chest ached so hard he could barely breathe. He rested his forehead against Merlin's, breathing him in.

"I'm going to move now, " he said quietly. "Very slowly. Promise. "

"Go, " Merlin breathed, fingers weakly curling against Arthur's arm. "Please. I want it. "

Arthur moved in slow, shallow thrusts. Bloodied hand stroking Merlin's pale skin. The red marks spread bright against the linen, stark on Merlin's ribs and hipbones.

The chain on Merlin's right ankle clinked softly with each shift of his leg. Ching. Ching. For a moment Arthur was back on the first afternoon.

Who are you?

I'm Merlin.

Merlin? Isn't that a little bird?

It's a falcon!

Arthur bent down and kissed him through the memory.

Pleasure built between them like something inevitable. A soft, broken sound escaped Merlin's throat as he came, and Arthur followed him hit the peak with a low groan.

When he pulled out, he stayed close, looking down at Merlin's flushed face.

Merlin's lips moved. His voice was barely there. "Did I… do it right?"

Arthur lifted hand and stroked Merlin's pale cheek with trembling fingers, thumb brushing away a stray tear.

"You were perfect, " he whispered. "You did so well. "

Merlin smiled faintly before his body jerked again, limbs seizing, eyes rolling back. A thin line of blood welled at the corner of his mouth and trickled down his chin.

"Merlin—no, no, no—" Arthur gathered him up at once, arms wrapping tight around the shaking form. "Don't do this to me. Please—"

He tried to wipe the blood away with his thumb, but more came, spreading across Merlin's lower lip, then down his chin and onto his throat.

"Please, please—" Arthur begged. He held Merlin through the convulsions.

It felt like hours. When the seizing finally eased, Merlin went limp again, head lolling against Arthur's chest.

Arthur could not wait any longer.

He laid Merlin gently back onto the stone platform, leaned down, and kissed him.

"Wait for me, " he whispered fiercely. "I'll come back and save you. I swear it. "

He stood on unsteady legs and looked down at the boy he loved. Then he took up his sword and left.

He ran straight to his father's chamber.

"Arthur. What is the meaning of this?" Uther stared.

"Let him go, " Arthur said.

"Let who go?"

"You know exactly who. " Arthur's voice was steady. "The boy beneath the castle. Balinor's son. Let him go, Father. Right now. Give me the key—"

Anger crossed Uther's face.

"So, " Uther said softly. "It has you. " He began to circle, his eyes never leaving Arthur's. "I should have known. I should have seen it in you these past years. It has been working on you all this while, hasn't it?" His voice rose. "You are enchanted, Arthur. Bewitched. That is not your will speaking—it is the creature's—"

"He never enchanted me!" Arthur shouted. "He is the best and kindest soul I have ever known. It is you—torturing an innocent boy—that is the enchantment, Father. That is the only spell in this room, the one you cast on yourself so you would never have to feel what you were doing!"

"You do not know what you are saying. " Uther snatched his own sword from beside the bed. "But I will bring you back to yourself. "

He came at Arthur.

Arthur met him. Steel rang on steel in the cold chamber. He fought as a man fights for the one he loves. Uther was stronger, harder, had fought a hundred real battles, but Arthur was young, quick, and desperate. Blow for blow they drove across the room. The king's breath began to labour, his guard began to slip. Arthur pressed him, and pressed him, driving him back at last against the wall until the sword was struck from his hand.

The point of the blade rested at his father's throat. One thrust—one single thrust—and Merlin would go free.

Uther did not beg. He only looked at his son down the length of the steel. "Do it, then, " he said. "If the creature has made you a murderer. If you would kill your own father for a monster in a pit. "

Arthur's hand trembled.

Through the roaring in his ears he heard, small and clear, a voice from long ago.

You will be. You're a good person, Arthur.

Arthur lowered the sword.

"No, " he said. "Someone told me, once, that I would be a good man. " He stepped back, looking at his father with something worse than hatred—grief. "I am not going to become you. I am going to tell them. All of it. What you did, and what it cost. Everyone in Camelot will know what their great king really is. "

There was utter silence in the chamber.

Then Uther's face contorted. He threw back his head and bellowed, "Guards! GUARDS!"

They came running. Uther flung out an arm toward his son. "The prince is out of his mind—bewitched by the sorcerer in the vaults! Seize him!" His chest heaved; his eyes were wild. "And prepare the yard. I will deal with this myself. The court shall see what befalls even a prince who lets witchcraft into his heart. Let it be a lesson to every soul in Camelot. I will lay the lash on him with my own hand. "

Hands closed on Arthur from every side. He did not fight them now. They dragged him toward the door.

Uther stepped close, took a fistful of Arthur's collar, hauled him near, and spoke low and vicious into his son's face.

"By all means, " the king breathed. "Try it. Tell them everything. And let us see who they believe—" his lip curled "—an enchanted prince, raving about a monster in the pit, or their king. " He shoved him back into the guards' hands. "Take him away. "

They put Arthur in a cell.

The guards withdrew to the passage, and Arthur was left alone.

Before long there were footsteps, and Gaius's face appeared at the bars.

"Sire. This was terribly rash. " He gripped the iron and peered in at him. "Do you understand what you've done? Ten minutes ago there was one of you locked away, and now there are two. The one below is dying, the one before me is to be flogged. What good does it do the boy, to have you in a cell?" He shook his grey head.

Arthur grinned and crossed to the bars. He glanced once toward the passage—the guards were talking—and then he reached into his shirt, drew out his hand, and opened it.

It was a key.

Gaius stared. "Is that—"

"My father's. " Arthur's eyes glittered. "He kept it in his inner pocket. I stole it during the chaos. This is the key, Gaius. This can open the chain. "

"You planned this, " Gaius breathed. "Even being taken. You meant to be caught. "

"I meant to get close enough to reach the key. The rest I made up as I went. " His voice dropped, and what remained was only urgent. "Gaius, there's no time. The whole castle is looking at me right now. No one is watching him. This is the only moment we'll ever have. " He pressed the black key through the bars into the old man's hand. "Take it. Go down. Open the chain. Get Merlin out—out of the cold iron, so his power can reach him, so he has a chance to heal. Get him out of Camelot, somewhere my father can never touch him again. "

Gaius looked down at the key in his fist. His hand was shaking.

Then the old physician nodded.

"Very well, " he said. He tucked the key away against his own chest. "I served the father for forty years. Perhaps it is time I served the son. " He lifted his lamp. "God keep you, Your Royal Highness. "

He turned. Arthur watched the light dwindle and vanish. Then he sank down onto the straw, cradled his broken hands in his lap, shut his eyes, and waited for his father to come for him.

He was not afraid at all.

They brought Arthur out into the yard at midday, so that all of Camelot might see.

They lashed his wrists to the post above his head, his back to the sun. He turned his head as best he could, so that he faced not the wood but the crowd.

Uther took the whip himself. He stepped up behind his son, and the yard fell silent. Uther spoke, for all to hear:

"Let every soul here witness what sorcery does. It turns a son against his father. It turns a prince against his king. There is no mercy for it—not even for the Royal Family. Let it be a warning. "

Then he drew back his arm, and the whip came down.

The first stroke was a line of white fire across Arthur's back. His whole body jerked against the post; the breath left him in a hard grunt through his teeth. But he did not cry out.

He lifted his head and spoke loud.

"The King tells you sorcery is evil, " Arthur said. "He tells you he burned it out of Camelot to keep you safe. Ask him what's chained beneath his castle. "

The whip cracked down again. Arthur's back arched; a second stripe of agony crossed the first. But the words came after it, dragged up out of the pain by sheer will.

"He built this kingdom on magic, " Arthur gasped. "Every war he won—ask him how. Ask him about the dragon under the floor. He has been bleeding him for his power—"

"Silence!" Uther snarled, and laid on harder.

The lash fell, and fell, and fell. Arthur felt the skin split, felt the warm crawl of his own blood running down his sides. His knees wanted to give; he locked them and kept his head up.

"He calls me enchanted—" Arthur forced out. "He'll tell you a sorcerer stole my mind. That's a lie. My mind is my own. I've seen it with my own eyes, the creature he keeps like a—" The whip tore the word in half. "—like a tool. Ask yourselves why a king who hates magic so much keeps one chained in the dark. Ask him what it cost him to have me. Ask him about my mother—"

The crowd was not murmuring now. It was roiling.

Uther stopped. Breathing hard, he turned from his son to face the yard. "You see, " he cried to them. "You see what it does! This is the true horror of magic! It has taken my own son! I do not punish my son today—I punish the enchantment that has seized him. "

He turned back and raised the whip again.

Arthur hung against the post, his sight swimming. But he lifted his head one more time. There was one more thing to say.

"Believe him if you want to, " Arthur said. "But you'll wonder. That's all I need. I don't need you to believe me today. I just needed you to hear it. And now you have. "

The ground moved.

A great groaning heave came from far below, from the very roots of the castle. Dust sifted down from the battlements. The far wall of the keep burst open.

Stone flew. The whole side of the castle's west quarter simply broke apart, blasted outward, and up out of the ruin rose the dragon.

Red, enormous, astonishing. It climbed into the light on a single great beat of its wings, the wind of them flattening the crowd. The sun caught the red of its scales and turned it to living fire.

Merlin? Isn't that a little bird?

It's a falcon!

Yes. Yes—his Merlin. Not a little bird at all. A falcon, a thing of the high sky; a free and soaring thing that should never, never have been kept in the dark of the earth.

Here he was. Flying, climbing the blue on wings—so free, so beautiful.

The court was in chaos. Nobles fled, servants screamed, knights scattered.

Arthur dragged himself upright against the post. He filled what was left of his lungs, tipped his head back to the wheeling red dragon, and cried out with everything he had:

"Fly!" Arthur shouted. "Merlin—fly! Get away from here—FLY!"

The great golden eye found him. High above, wheeling, the dragon turned its vast head and looked down. They saw each other, across everything.

Go, Arthur thought, with all his heart. Go on. Be free. My love.

The dragon held his eye. Then it wheeled once more, turning its great wings toward the hills, the rivers, and the enormous sky. With vast beats Merlin flew—up, and out, and away—dwindling against the blue, smaller and smaller...

Arthur watched him go until he could see him no more. Then he let the darkness take him.

The whole of Camelot had seen the dragon burst out of the castle. There was no arguing with it. With that, people began to believe everything Arthur had said. If the dragon was real, then perhaps the rest was real. Perhaps all of it was real.

The king could not rule a kingdom that no longer believed him. Uther stepped down himself. The crown passed to Arthur.

Arthur was not yet of age. Until he came into his majority, the governing of Camelot fell to the Lady Morgana—Duchess Morgana, now.

For Arthur was in a bad way. The flogging had opened him to the bone in places. Gaius sat up with him night after night, changing the dressings, and brought him through it.

A few days later, Arthur lay in his bed, on his stomach because his back would not yet bear anything else.

"Damn you, Merlin, " he muttered into his pillow. "Idiot. Turnip. Not so much as a visit. " He shifted, winced, sulked harder. "I know you're free. I know the world's a wonderful place out there and I told you to go—but I didn't say go for good. " He glared at the wall. "I bled half to death getting that key. The least you could do is put your head round the door and say thank you. "

"Erm... thank you. "

The window banged open.

Merlin—human Merlin—climbed in through the window.

"For the record, I didn't go for good, " Merlin said.

"Merlin it's you!" Arthur cried, lurching up on his arms, and instantly paid for it, sucking in his breath through his teeth as the pain ripped across his back.

"It's me!" Merlin was across the room. "Don't move, prat—"

"Where have you been?" Arthur demanded. "What took you so long?"

Merlin laughed, climbed up onto the bed, and bent over Arthur's ruined back.

His lips moved slowly across the torn and bandaged skin, and where they passed, the warmth spread. Arthur let out a long breath into the pillow, going soft under the touch.

"What took me so long, " Merlin said between kisses, "is that I had to go and find the bloke called Leon. And punch him hard. "

Arthur huffed a laugh into the pillow. "I imagine he's in a sorry state, then. "

"I've made sure his black eye would stick around for a week. " Merlin sounded thoroughly pleased with himself. "Though, I have to admit, afterwards, he turned out to be quite decent. He's the one who told me which room was yours. " He rolled his eyes. "I lived in this castle for years, and I hadn't the faintest idea which of the rooms up here was yours. There are far too many. It's ridiculous. "

"Believe me, " Arthur murmured, "there used to be a great many more. You demolished about half of them. "

Merlin had the grace to look mildly abashed. Then he grinned.

"Duchess Morgana, " Arthur went on, "has been tearing her hair out over the rebuilding. So do be careful she doesn't catch you in here. If she works out that the dragon who put a hole through the west keep is currently sitting on my bed kissing me, she may well decide to murder you. "

"That's hardly all my fault, " Merlin said loftily. "There's a treasonous prince who's just as guilty as I am. "

"Plead guilty, " Arthur said. "But you've got one thing wrong. I'm a king now. "

Merlin considered this, his own eyes very blue and very warm in the light.

"All right, " he said, climbed carefully over, straddling on Arthur. "A treasonous king, then. "

Merlin laid both palms flat on the bandaged.

"Onbindað. "

The bandages stirred as the words rolling out from his mouth; the linen unwound itself in soft coils and slid away, baring the full length of the flogging.

Merlin looked down at the damage.

"Never in my life have I wanted to kill someone so badly, " he said cold. "He did this to his own son. How much it must have hurt you—"

"It didn't, " Arthur said. "Not then. All I could see was you. Flying. That was all there was in my head. "

Merlin licked slowly along the torn flesh. The wound closed under his tongue, skin knitting smooth. He moved lower, tracing each cruel stripe, deliberate stroke of his mouth.

Merlin's mouth touched the healed skin, then the next raw line, then the next. Shoulders, spine, the dimples above his hips, until only faint pink traces remained.

Arthur groaned, the sound muffled in the pillow, long and satisfied.

Merlin smiled against his skin, letting his tongue trace the curve of bone. Arthur's hands fisted in the sheets. Another low moan vibrated through him.

"Better?" Merlin asked softly.

"... Yeah... keep going, " Arthur's voice hoarse. 

Merlin's mouth moving slowly, pressing open-mouthed kisses into Arthur's hips. Arthur felt the hard line of Merlin's cock through his own trousers, nudging against the back of his thigh as Merlin shifted, rubbing himself there in helpless rolls of his hips.

Arthur was hard in seconds, cock thickening against the sheets beneath him. He turned carefully onto his back, reaching up to drag Merlin down into his arms. Merlin came willingly, straddling Arthur's thighs, knees planted on either side of his hips. Their cocks brushed through layers of cloth.

"Clotpole, " Merlin said. "Your back isn't fully healed. "

Arthur buried his face in the curve of Merlin's neck. "Can't wait anymore, " he muttered against warm skin. "It's already so much better. You made it better. " His hands slid down, fingers hooking into the waistband of Merlin's breeches and then his own. "Please. I need you. "

He shoved both down until their cocks sprang free. The first touch of bare skin made them both gasp.

Their lengths pressed together. Long, grinding slides of flesh on flesh, the heads catching and dragging with every thrust of their hips in perfect, aching friction. Thick and hot and leaking steadily between their bellies.

They snogged like they were drowning in each other. Merlin's tongue slid against Arthur's thorough, while his hands framed Arthur's face.  He moaned softly into their mouths, and Arthur answered with a low sound of his own. 

Merlin's breath hitched against Arthur's lips. "Arthur—"

"Merlin, Merlin... my beautiful dragon—" Arthur whispered back, voice with desperate. He thrust up to meet Merlin's grind.

They breathed each other's air. Pleasure built fast. They came almost at the same time.

Tangling together on the bed, their legs wrapped, arms around. They snogged for a long while, mouths moving slow and sweet against each other.

Arthur's fingers threaded through Merlin's dark curls, stroking gently. He held him close. "Now you're free, " he said quietly. "I won't force you to stay. You can go wherever you want. "

Merlin lifted his head from Arthur's chest and looked at him.

"I want to stay, " he said. "... How could I leave when my favorite prince is here?" A smile curved his mouth. "Well, my favourite king, now. "

"You have no idea. "

Arthur hugged his dragon tighter, pulling him close against his beating heart.

The End.