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five of wands — strife, conflict, disagreements
The King of Tír-Mòr and his pretty daughter are the most important guests Camelot has hosted in months, and the food at the welcoming banquet is excellent, as it has to be on such occasions as this.
The wine is also excellent, much stronger than the watered down stuff that gets served to the knights at communal meals, and the servants keep it flowing freely.
Gwaine tries to catch Merlin’s eye a few times during the night, but he is hovering at Arthur’s elbow, refilling goblets, directing orders at other servants, looking tense.
He would be; it’s an important banquet, and for all that Arthur makes fun of Merlin’s terrible skills as a servant, Merlin always does his best to make Arthur proud.
He’s that sort of man.
So, Gwaine doesn’t so much as cross eyes with Merlin for the entire banquet, which is a shame, but not a tragedy. There’s a pretty girl keeping Gwaine’s cup topped up with wine and a man from King Aulfric’s retinue sitting at his side, lending Gwaine an attentive ear as he chatters about his travels across Albion, and that’s more than enough to keep Gwaine distracted for the night.
He lingers in the Great Hall long after all the royals and most of the guests have left, watching as the servants start clearing away the empty plates, half-listening to his table-fellow talking about the time he visited Nemeth and the exquisite architecture of some temple or other he saw there.
Out of the corner of his eye, Gwaine sees Merlin say something to a girl and pass her a jug, before walking towards the servants’ passage leading out of the hall.
“And every inch of it,” Cael says, “covered with the most intricate carvings I’ve ever—”
“Terribly sorry, my friend,” Gwaine interrupts, standing up. “Call of nature. If you'll excuse me.”
He goes after Merlin, as quickly as his unsteady legs allow. Perhaps he’s had a bit more wine than he can handle. Which is impressive, because he can handle quite a lot.
“Merlin!” he calls after the figure hurriedly walking away, and his voice booms in the empty passage.
Merlin doesn’t slow down, so Gwaine trots after him. Stumbles. Catches himself against the wall. When he finally catches up with Merlin, he grabs him by the shoulders and flips him against the wall. A bit more forcefully than he intended, perhaps, but. The wine. Treacherous thing.
“You deaf?” he asks Merlin, and tries to flash him his most charming smile.
Merlin doesn’t appear charmed. He looks annoyed, which means Gwaine’s smile probably just looked stupidly drunk. Which is exactly how Gwaine feels. Stupid, and drunk.
He snorts a laugh and presses Merlin against the wall, or half-collapses on him, maybe, but it doesn’t hugely matter because the end result is the same. Having Merlin pressed against the wall.
Gwaine nuzzles Merlin’s neck, and Merlin gives him a little shove. It’s not playful.
“Honestly,” Merlin says, eyes brimming with indignation. It’s an expression Gwaine has seen on Merlin’s face a few times now. He usually finds it attractive. But maybe not when directed at him. “Have you no shame?”
“None,” Gwaine says. “You know me.”
He’s not exactly sure where the prudery is coming from. This is the same man who had no qualms about sucking Gwaine off in a corridor.
Thinking about it, Gwaine's pretty sure it was this corridor.
“I meant about that girl,” Merlin says, with another pointed poke at his chest.
“What?”
“That serving girl!” Merlin snaps. “The one you’ve been flirting with all night.”
Gwaine blinks. It takes a few seconds for his brain to conjure up the image of the girl who has been generously refilling his cup during the night — one of the maids from Tír-Mòr, auburn hair shining in the candlelight like copper, a studiously coy smile meant to intrigue.
“Maeve?” he asks, puzzled, and he can immediately tell from Merlin’s face that the word was a mistake; that the fact that he even knows the girl’s name is incriminating enough. He still keeps talking. “You’re jealous?”
He can’t keep the disbelief from of his voice, because the idea is laughable. His eye may wander, but his heart is steadfast enough, and Merlin knows it. He must know it.
“Maybe if you hadn’t spent most of the banquet undressing her with your eyes—” Merlin starts, and Gwaine does laugh.
“Oh, come on! She was flirting a little, I might have flirted back, so what? What did you expect me to say? Sorry, love, stop making eyes at me, I’m fucking the king’s manservant over there!”
Hurt flashes across Merlin’s face — just for the time of a blink. Then his face goes blank and unreadable, eyes as cold as ice. It makes Gwaine’s heart sink.
“That would’ve been just the thing to say,” Merlin says, tightly, “if you were trying to bed her.”
“Merlin—”
“At least she’d know you won’t let something as stupid as rank stop you from sticking your cock into the first willing person you come across.”
“Merlin.”
Merlin slaps Gwaine’s hand away and shoves him in the chest hard enough to make him stumble backwards.
“You should get back to your chamber.” He stops and runs his eyes over Gwaine, with none of the flirtatiousness or the pleasure with which he usually does it. “If you can find your way there.”
Gwaine stares at Merlin’s retreating back until he’s out of sight.
* * *
“Merlin.”
Merlin is sitting at a small workbench at the edge of the training field, sharpening arrow tips with a whetstone.
“Sir Gwaine,” he acknowledges, without looking up. It’s still more than Gwaine’s had in two days. “Is there anything you need?”
“I’m sorry,” Gwaine says.
Merlin does not look at him. He doesn’t even stop his work.
“You should be on the training field, my lord,” he says, “not wasting your time talking to a servant.”
It’s remarkable, really, Merlin’s ability to make a perfectly appropriate title sound so insulting. Gwaine would appreciate it more if he wasn’t on the receiving end of it, this time.
“I said I'm sorry,” Gwaine repeats. “About the other night. I had too much wine and I spoke without thinking. I did not mean to hurt you, and I regret that I did.”
Merlin keeps scraping the stone against an arrow tip. Scraping. Scraping. Scraping.
Surely that’s sharp enough now.
“And how I behaved with that girl,” he carries on, after Merlin offers him nothing. “Old habit. Not that that’s any excuse.”
“Gwaine?” Elyan calls from the field, deprived of his sparring partner. Gwaine ignores him.
“Merlin, if you don’t at least look at me I will drop to my knees here and now in front of everyone. I don’t care if the king sees it.”
Merlin sighs, frustrated, his eyes on his work.
Gwaine’s chainmail clinks against his tassels as he starts bending at the knees.
“Oh, for f—” Merlin jumps to his feet. “Don’t.”
“Say I’m forgiven, then.”
“Yes, yes, all right,” Merlin capitulates, and he looks him in the eye, at last, and Gwaine feels like he’s breathing for the first time in days.
“Gwaine?” Elyan calls again, sounding very close to losing his patience.
Merlin slaps his whetstone and arrow on the workbench. He takes Gwaine’s training sword from his unresisting hand, grabs another one at random from the pile near his feet and shoves it at Gwaine’s chest, so as to make it look like Gwaine was asking him for something, and not about to make a complete fool of himself. Again.
“Shall I wait for you tonight?” Gwaine asks, not caring if he sounds like a man hopelessly in love with a fair maiden, or even like a lovesick girl himself.
“Yes,” Merlin says, curtly, almost dismissively, but Gwaine doesn’t miss the way the corner of his mouth twitches. His heart does a little jump in his chest. “Now go.”
He goes.
Elyan defeats him brutally, disarming him in about three moves. Gwaine doesn’t care one bit.
* * *
The ride back to Camelot is a hazy affair. Gwaine feels like his head has been dunked into a bucket of molasses. Everything feels slow. Everything sounds muffled.
“You got lucky back there, Gwaine,” Percival says, riding beside him. “If that branch had fallen a moment later…”
Gwaine glances at Merlin, riding in front of them, flanked by Leon and Arthur. He watches Merlin’s shoulders tense.
Images and sounds flash rapidly in his mind: the world tipping as he runs; the leaf-covered ground rising up to meet him; an axe, looming above him as he rolls onto his back. Merlin screaming his name in warning, as if Gwaine could do anything to stop what is about to happen.
Then the crack of a branch above him, sharp and sickening, like a bone breaking. The branch falling on the bandit’s head. No, not falling, nothing as mundane as that — being forcibly snapped from the tree and brought down on Gwaine’s attacker. Swiftly, violently, like a club wielded by an invisible giant.
Merlin’s eyes burning gold when the bandit collapses and Gwaine meets his gaze.
Merlin, frozen, his arm raised, his open hand extended towards the point the branch fell from. Was torn from.
“Yeah,” Gwaine tells Percival. “I could use some of that luck at cards, eh?”
Merlin’s eyes fading back to blue and filling with terror as he looks at Gwaine.
When they get to Camelot and into the stables, Merlin dismounts quickly. He whispers something in Arthur’s ear, then hands the reins of his horse to Tyr and nearly flees.
Gwaine follows a few steps behind Merlin, across the courtyard and down castle corridors. He closes the distance between them just before Merlin can reach the physician’s chambers, and he grasps his sleeve.
Merlin turns around, face guarded. Gwaine cannot tell what he's thinking. The terror that filled Merlin's eyes in the forest is gone, but it left nothing in its wake.
“You’re a—”
“Gwaine.”
“You’re a sorcerer?”
“Keep your voice down!”
“A sorcerer?” Gwaine hisses, his voice lower but no less agitated. He feels like shaking the stupid boy by the shoulders. “What the hell are you even doing here! Are you out of your mind?”
Merlin looks at him. Pale. So pale.
“You’re not going to tell Arthur?” he asks in a whisper.
“What? No, no of course I won’t tell Arthur! Why—”
There's an armful of Merlin in Gwaine's arms before he can even finish the sentence. Merlin wraps his arms tight around Gwaine and buries his face in his shoulder, trembling like a newborn colt.
“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “I’m sorry for not telling you. I didn’t know how.”
Gwaine shakes his head as he squeezes Merlin against him, because that is so not the point. He holds Merlin until his shivering subsides, and until his own heart stops thumping so painfully against his ribs.
Later, safe inside Gaius’s empty chambers, Gwaine says:
“You shouldn’t stay here.”
Which is a sensible and obvious statement, yet Merlin looks at him as if he couldn't comprehend it.
“Where exactly would I go?” he asks, puzzled.
So not the point.
“Anywhere else,” Gwaine says.
Merlin laughs, the way a man does when there's nothing funny about his situation. “As if other kingdoms were bastions of tolerance towards magic.”
“But there’s no worse kingdom for a sorcerer than Camelot. Why stay here?”
Merlin shifts on the bench he's sitting on and avoids Gwaine's eyes, looking cagey.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
“For Arthur? You owe him nothing.”
“He’s my king,” Merlin says, quietly, with unshakeable conviction.
“He’d have you executed if he found out.”
Merlin leans forward and puts his elbows on his knees. He buries his face in his hands.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” he murmurs into his palms.
The sting of it makes Gwaine's eyes water. He's not sure if Merlin means he's not honourable or loyal enough to understand his devotion, or literally too stupid to get it. Neither option is great.
“Merlin, have you— have you not seen what happens here to people accused of using magic? That woman in the courtyard just three days ago— ”
Merlin takes his hands away from his face and slaps them on his knees with unexpected force.
“Of course I’ve seen what happens here!” he explodes, cutting Gwaine off. “How could I not! I’ve lived here far longer than you have, do you think it somehow escaped my notice?”
He shoves himself to his feet and stands in front of Gwaine. The rage in his eyes almost makes Gwaine step back.
“You think that woman was bad? You were not here under Uther. You didn’t spend years biting your tongue while watching scores of other people be executed for the crime of being…” He stops, lets out a heavy breath. “Being like you.”
Gwaine doesn't say anything. There is nothing he can say. The anger has left Merlin’s eyes and body with those last few words, and now he looks deflated. Defeated.
“And you didn’t look that upset, when it happened,” Merlin continues, softly.
There is, incredibly, no hostility in his voice — only sadness, a deep-seated thing, the kind that grows roots inside you, and you simply learn to live with. It's not an accusation, just a statement of a fact. Which makes it worse, somehow.
Shame burns hot in Gwaine’s chest and on his face. It's hard to keep looking in Merlin's eyes, but he forces himself to.
At last Merlin takes pity on him, or perhaps he cannot bear to look at him any longer. He walks to one of the arched windows and leans against the wall.
“None of you ever do. You’ll feel sorry, at best. It’s unfortunate that it happens, but it has to happen, so you move on with your life. None of you ever… grieves.” Merlin scrunches his face and shakes his head, as if trying to get an unpleasant thought out of his mind. “So don’t come talking to me about that woman now, as if she meant anything to you.”
Merlin closes his eyes. He presses his forehead against the wall. “I have to remain here. I don’t expect you to understand. But it’s my destiny. My duty.”
They stay like that a moment longer — Merlin, eyes closed, bathed in the light of dusk; Gwaine, looking at him, an indefinable ache in his chest.
Then Gwaine walks to him. Merlin doesn't move, doesn't even stir as Gwaine stands beside him.
Gwaine clears his throat. “I’m sorry.”
Merlin rolls his head against the wall and opens his eyes wide. Blue brightness. “What for?”
“For presuming to know better than you.”
Merlin stares at him. And stares. Saying nothing. Still leaning with his head against the wall, as if it were too heavy for his neck.
“I can’t promise to understand.” Gwaine says. “The whole… destiny thing. But I promise I’ll try to, if you tell me about it.”
Merlin looks at him, unsure. He stares into Gwaine’s eyes as if looking for something that might be hiding at the bottom of them, and Gwaine lets himself be searched, standing there wide open, in a way he rarely allows himself to be, even with Merlin; hoping that Merlin will find whatever he’s looking for in the depth of his eyes, or at least something close to it, something that will do for now.
Whatever it'll take to stop Merlin from looking like he might come completely unravelled if something pulls at him too hard.
Then Merlin straightens and nods. “All right.”
* * *
strength — inner strength, courage, endurance
“I didn’t want you to find out. But I’m glad that you know, now.” Warm puffs of air from Merlin’s lips stir Gwaine’s chest hair as he speaks. Merlin turns his head and rubs his face against Gwaine’s chest like a cat. “Perhaps it’s selfish.”
“Selfish?” Gwaine asks. “How so?”
“Because no one who knew about my magic ever fared well,” Merlin says and he laughs, bitterly.
Gwaine runs his fingers through Merlin’s hair. He knows about those who discovered Merlin's secret before him and didn't make it. None of them Merlin’s fault.
You're forgetting Gaius, I bet the old man will outlive us all, Gwaine almost says, just to lighten the mood a bit, but before he can speak, Merlin says:
“I miss Lancelot.”
Gwaine swallows the words that were on the tip of his tongue.
“I know,” he says instead. “I miss him, too.”
It’s been almost a year since Lancelot’s death. They were close, he and Merlin. Gwaine remembers how deeply Merlin grieved his loss — how he became withdrawn for months afterwards, almost sullen at times when accompanying the king and his knights on expeditions.
He’s noticed how a trace of that melancholy still lingers, well hidden but quick to resurface at times. He's seen it in Merlin’s unfocused eyes as he stared into a campfire. He hears it in his voice now.
“If he hadn’t known about my magic he wouldn’t have stepped through the Veil,” Merlin says, and the conviction in his voice is heartbreaking. “I filled his head with talk of destiny and prophecy. It made him think his life wasn't as valuable as mine. Had he thought I was just Arthur’s servant—”
“He would have done the same anyway,” Gwaine says. “That’s what Lancelot was like. That’s why he was the most noble of all us knights.”
Merlin doesn't seem to have an answer to that.
“You’re special, Merlin,” Gwaine goes on. “In a way that has nothing to do with your destiny or your powers. Lancelot could see it as clearly as I do.”
Merlin holds him tighter. Then he turns and presses a kiss to Gwaine’s chest. Just over his heart.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he vows.
“I don’t need protecting.”
Merlin sighs. “I’ll do it anyway.”
* * *
A scouting party reports sighting a dragon in the White Mountains.
“That’s impossible,” Arthur says. “I killed the Great Dragon myself.”
The knights bringing news to the king look at each other, uneasy.
“No, sire. Another one. A white dragon.”
The king pales.
At the council meeting the king hastily calls, Gwaine keeps his eyes on Melin, standing at the back, looking about to vibrate out of his skin.
Morgana is drawing closer. She is commanding a dragon. She might have recruited allies. There might be another siege.
Merlin meets Gwaine’s eye. He looks scared, but resolute. Like a man who’s just made a monumental decision. Like a man about to walk into battle.
Later, in the privacy of his own chamber, Gwaine asks him for the third time: “Are you sure?”
And, for the third time, Merlin answers: “Yes.”
“Could you not disguise yourself again?”
“He won’t listen to a random sorcerer,” Merlin says, shaking his head as he paces around the room, “not after what happened to his father. But he’ll listen to me.”
It’s astonishing, sometimes, Merlin’s belief in Arthur. Gwaine believes it too, of course, that Arthur is fundamentally a good man, or he would not have sworn loyalty to him; but even good men are fallible. And a good man of uncompromising principles, who believes the law is just and should apply to everyone, might be the most dangerous of all.
“You have more faith in him than I do.”
Merlin stops pacing in circles and looks at him.
“Years of practice,” he says with a small laugh, but the spark of amusement dies quickly in his eyes. “He needs me. I can stop Aithusa. We can stop Morgana, once and for all! He just… he just needs to listen.”
Ironic that Merlin, of all people, should say that. A man who’s like a battering ram once he gets an idea in his head.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Gwaine asks, though he knows the answer already.
Merlin puts his hands on his hips, looking at the floor. “No,” he says. “No, I need to do this alone.”
It’s an impulse, then, to take Merlin’s face in his hands and kiss him. There’s no thought behind it; it’s just something Gwaine feels compelled to do.
Merlin accepts the kiss with what looks like relief. As he kisses Gwaine back he clings to the front of his shirt, like a man drowning in the sea would hold onto a rock jutting out of the water.
When they break apart they keep leaning into each other, forehead against forehead.
“You are the bravest man I know,” Gwaine says, and Merlin huffs, a soft burst of laughter.
“I’m terrified.”
“I know,” Gwaine says. He swipes his thumbs across Merlin’s cheeks. “That’s what makes you brave.”
He lets him go. Merlin straightens and nods. Steeling himself.
“If I don’t get word from you by tonight—” Gwaine starts.
“You will.”
“I’d better. Or Arthur will have to deal with a far more immediate problem than Morgana. I don’t care if he throws me in the dungeons.”
Merlin looks at him, pleading. “Please, don’t do anything that would get you arrested.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Fine,” Merlin says, and nods again, as if he didn’t care. Then he adds, more quietly: “You won’t have to, though. He’s a good man. I know it.”
Gwaine knows it, too, but he’s not sure he trusts it to be enough.
“I’d better go now,” Merlin says.
“Yes.”
Merlin walks to the door, opens it, and then he stops to look back at Gwaine. He gives him a small smile, and there's something peaceful in it, and his eyes are filled with hope, so much hope, unwavering and stubborn; and if Arthur dares to break such a precious thing, Gwaine will spare Morgana the trouble of killing her own brother and do the job himself.
Merlin walks out, closing the door gently after him.
* * *
the world — achievement, fulfilment.
the end of a cycle and the beginning of a new one.
The Great Hall is filled with food and music and people, many of them eager to talk to the guest of honour.
Merlin stands next to Gaius, face slightly flushed, only partly from the wine. He's listening to Sefa tell him something that gets her increasingly excited, and when she reaches the end of her story Merlin laughs, and she laughs, and she puts a hand on Merlin’s arm as she does it.
Oh, she is keen on him. Gwaine doesn’t even hold it against her. She is right to be. Everyone should be in love with Merlin, in fact; he’s the most lovable person there is.
Sefa brushes her hand down Merlin’s arm before letting it go and asking him something. He shakes his head with an apologetic smile, and Sefa nods, smiling back but looking slightly disappointed.
After she leaves, Merlin whispers something into Gaius’s ear. They both turn to glance at Gwaine — Gaius with a daunting eyebrow, Merlin with a small closed-lip smile, meant for no one but himself — and then, at last, Merlin walks to him.
“Ah, the court sorcerer himself!” Gwaine exclaims, spreading his arms wide, and some wine sloshes out of his goblet and spills on the floor. He claps one hand on Merlin's shoulder. “Congratulations, Master Merlin.”
“I told you to stop calling me that.”
Gwaine just looks at him. Head to toe, with a grin that does nothing to hide what he's thinking, and must therefore come across as incredibly lewd.
“You look good in green,” is all he says.
Merlin raises an eyebrow. “You think I look good in anything.”
Gwaine leans closer; close enough to purr in Merlin’s ear: “And even better in nothing at all.” Mainly for the pleasure of watching the tips of Merlin’s ears flush pink.
Merlin looks at him, half-fond and half-exasperated, and Gwaine laughs.
“What did Sefa ask you?”
Merlin looks embarrassed. “For a dance.”
“Ah!”
“I said no.”
“Merlin!” Gwaine grabs Merlin’s shoulder with his free hand and gives him a little shake. “You’ve got a pretty girl asking you for a dance and you refuse her? You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Merlin peers into his own goblet, hesitant. “I don’t want to give her the wrong impression.”
“It’s a dance, not a marriage proposal.”
Merlin laughs.
“Besides,” Gwaine continues, “it’s your night.”
Merlin squints at him. “I think the idea was to celebrate the defeat of Morgana, you know,” he says. “Rather than my appointment.”
“It’s your night,” Gwaine repeats, and snatches Merlin’s goblet out of his hands, ignoring his sound of protest. “So go have some fun.”
He winks at Merlin and walks away without giving him a chance to reply, and he joins Percival and Elyan, engrossed in a not-entirely-sober debate on what weapon would work best to defeat an Afanc, a creature Gwaine has never heard of, and that the two have presumably made up.
Later, he spots Merlin and Sefa holding hands in a circle of dancing couples, moving together towards its centre and back, twirling around each other, bumping into other dancers because they don't quite know the steps, but it doesn't matter, they're both laughing, and there are other servants in the circle who are equally awkward and unconcerned, because tonight is a night of celebration for all, and everyone should dance and drink and be merry, from the king himself to the the most humble servant in the castle.
Later still, in Gwaine's chamber, he and Merlin have an intense and satisfying bout of celebration of their own.
They both lie on their backs afterwards, catching their breath, heavy-limbed and sated and sweaty.
“I’m happy for you, you know,” Gwaine says. “You deserve this.”
“Hmm. It’s not like Arthur had a huge pool of people to choose from for the position,” Merlin says.
Gwaine moves the arm he's draped over his head to knock on Merlin’s forehead.
“Ow!”
“Don’t be stupid,” Gwaine chides, because Merlin knows what he meant. “You deserve all this and more. You deserve the world.”
He says it without thinking, because it's true and obvious, but he can hear how sappy it sounds as soon as the words leave his mouth. It seems like Merlin has the ability to draw terribly sentimental things out of him just by being in his presence, the way the moon commands the tides.
Merlin looks at him and his eyes shine with love, ever-enduring and inexplicable; so much love that Gwaine fears he might drown in it if he looks into those eyes for too long.
He cups one side of Merlin's face and leans closer for a kiss. Merlin's lips are soft and pliant, slightly salty with sweat, and there's still a faint taste of wine in his mouth when Gwaine slides his tongue inside it. When they break apart, Merlin lets out a contented sigh.
“This is it, then,” Gwaine says. “The golden age. This is how it starts.”
It seems to take Merlin by surprise. His face brightens, and he moves his hand to tuck a strand of Gwaine’s hair behind his ear.
The ring that Gwaine used to wear on his necklace gleams on Merlin’s finger in the soft light of the moonlight and the candle flames.
“I think it is,” Merlin says.