Work Text:
Merlin's head snapped up as he felt the rush of raw magic flood his senses. Mordred. Without a second thought, he turned and ran back into the castle away from the swinging body in the square. Gwen saw him go, though Arthur did not.
"Mordred." Merlin called within his mind as he raced through the mostly empty halls of the castle.
"Leave me alone!" Came the sharp reply.
Merlin adjusted his direction as he headed not towards the cells as he had been, but away to the forest beside the castle where he knew now Mordred was.
"You know I can't do that." He replied solemnly, mentally preparing himself to face the boy he had betrayed yet had to convince against betrayal.
"Why?" The response was a lament, to more than just Merlin's words but also to the tragedy the young druid had just endured.
"Mordred?" Merlin called aloud as he trekked through the forest he knew now so well.
"Go away." Mordred's voice was choked and strained. Merlin rounded one final trunk and found the druid slumped against an oak in a small clearing.
"No." He told him gently.
"Why not!" Mordred cried angrily, lifting his tear-stained face to glare at Merlin.
"Because you're hurting..." Merlin answered simply, being honest for once.
"Why should you care? You hate me." The boy spat the words at the servant.
"I don't hate you, Mordred." Merlin told him, his heart-breaking.
"Really? Then you do a marvellous impression of hatred." Mordred replied, sarcastic fire dripping off every syllable; and stared with eyes full of tears off into the trees.
"I don't hate you, Mordred." Merlin repeated, Mordred looked back at him - curious despite himself. "I'm afraid of you." he admitted softly, slumping down against a tree opposite from the younger man.
"What?" Mordred frowned, "Why? I'm barely a match for you, even with my training..."
"No, not of what you could do to me." Merlin told him, barely restraining himself from rolling his eyes.
"Then what. Why do you fear me, Emrys?" The name that had always before been spoken in near reverence now rolled off his tongue like a curse.
"For what you may do to Arthur." The warlock explained.
"Arthur." Mordred responded, stunned and hurt. "You're worried about Arthur. Even now, you worry more about him! What, if I betray him..."
"Yes." Merlin cut in, sharply "If you betray him now- then I'll have to deal with him." He let a little of his sarcastic humour bleed into his tone - the wrong move.
"Don't joke!" Mordred roared. "Not at a time like this! Have you no respect? No shame?"
"A time like what?" Merlin asked furiously. Mordred only choked unable to speak the words. "At a time like what, Mordred?" Merlin persisted, his voice hard and his eyes harder.
"When the love of my life has been... cut down like an animal !" The young man screamed, but his lament stopped short as he laid eyes on Merlin's face across the clearing. "Why are you crying? You didn't know her - could you have stopped this! Is this guilt? Merlin, answer me!"
As his desperate interrogation faded into silence, Merlin spoke: "No Mordred. This day is a dark one but it reminds me of a darker one of my own."
"What do you mean?" Mordred begged with rage adorning his pale features like a storm does the mountains. "My love is dead! Killed, murdered by a man who is no longer my king!"
"Please don't do this Mordred." Merlin begged this time.
"He has taken everything from me!" Mordred cried.
"No, he hasn't." Merlin interrupted urgently, "You can still forgive him-"
"Forgive him! NEVER!" The druid declared, a crazed fire in his eyes being fuelled by his rage.
"Don't let this take your oath from you, Mordred. Your loyalty, your wellbeing, your life; do not need to die as she has... If you can forgive him-"
"NO!"
"Mordred, please! It will take time, I know..."
"What do you mean? Don't you dare pretend like you know what I'm feeling Merlin. Has he ever hurt you, truly? He may be a bit mean on occasion, but don't even try to act like you know how I am feeling!"
Merlin could only weep and whisper: "I just want to help, Mordred."
"Get me back Kara then!" Mordred yelled, before frowning and turning in seriousness and earnest to the warlock.
"I can't do that." Merlin held up his hands placatingly, "Mordred, you know I can't, no one can. Don't go down that road, please!"
"Maybe no one else can." Mordred murmured, a dreadful hope blooming in his red-rimmed eyes. "I certainly can't. But you. You can. You are magic itself, Emrys. If anyone can it's you. Bring her back to me, Emrys!
"No." Merlin told him firmly, trying to disguise the wave of increasingly dark memories that washed over him at the druid's words.
"So you do hate me." Mordred answered bitterly, slumping once again against the mossy trunk and hiding his face in his hands.
"I don't hate you, Mordred. Even if I could do what you're asking - which I'm not even sure I can, I wouldn't even know where to start - I wouldn't. Not because I hate you or anything like that, it's just... There are some things that should never be done. You ask the impossible, Mordred. I will not do it."
"You would not save a dear innocent woman from an unrighteous death. Not even for me, Merlin." Mordred gazed through his fingers at the warlock, emotions unreadable in his eyes. "Why am I not surprised? You wouldn't save her even when she was alive, why would her... H-her being d-dead change anything." Sobs broke the stale air between them, and Merlin almost wept with him. "Traitor! Traitor of magic!"
Mordred raged, rounding on the other man as he stared at him. "Traitor! Traitor to your people! Traitor to the old ways! Traitor to the druids! Traitor to the Old Religion! Traitor! Traitor!"
"Mordred. Do not call me a traitor." Merlin told him, deliberately blandly.
"You could have saved her!" The younger man wept anew. "Arthur would have listened to you! Even if not, you could have got her out. Out of the cells, out of Camelot. Why didn't you HELP US!"
As his tears flowed and drowned out any further words he could have uttered, Merlin spoke quietly.
"I tried, Mordred. Please believe me. But the penalty for her crime was death."
"Then you should have died a million times over, right? Since when do you agree with the laws against magic, anyway." Mordred retorted, hoarsely.
"I don't-"
"Then why Merlin!" he roared, his anger returning at the forced impassivity of Merlin's expression.
"She was not innocent, Mordred!" Merlin shrieked, all his guilt building up within his like water behind a dam. And the dam was cracking. Mordred sobbed, and Merlin continued more gently. "She committed treason against the crown. And for that, her punishment was death. Magic never came into it."
"You lie!"
"The how doesn't change the what, Mordred. Yes, she used magic in her treason, but it was still treason." Merlin told him patiently, having had the very same argument alone in this forest many a time.
"He is a Pendragon! Just like his father. Heartless and relentless in his destruction of our kind."
"Mordred! You know that's not true."
"He kills those with magic just for their magic! Maybe he would have relented if she had not been a druid, but he did not! For the sake of her magic, she is dead! My love is dead! He took her from me for something she was born into..."
"Mordred. Snap out of it!" Merlin yelled. "You know that was not what happened. Do not let her poison your mind like this Mordred, you are better than that."
"So you hate her as well then. Well that explains a lot. Like why you let her die! Like why you wouldn't save her - not even for herself, but for me. You always hated me, Merlin, but did I not prove my worth and my loyalty? For our kind and for Camelot, much good did it do me. You could have stopped him! You could have stopped him from..." He broke off as his emotions overran him. Merlin sat in silence, watching with eyes like his namesake's. "Cold-hearted betrayal. I should have expected it..." Mordred added, bitterly. "I thought he liked me! Haven't I been loyal, Merlin? Did I not deserve some kind of repayment for that service?" he asked desperately.
Finally, Merlin answered. "I think you're missing the basic point about loyalty - that it is selfless. Given not out of owing or expecting to be owed. Selflessly offered. Loyalty not out of self-interest, but from truth and pureness of heart. And you did, Mordred, you were truly loyal - until you wanted something, and suddenly felt like this was a transaction... That you should get something, for your selflessness that had died."
"Don't give me that speech, traitor! Are you loyal to him?" He spat the pronoun like it was a gaia berry, and continued: "Selflessly? Should magic users not count on your support if you will throw them on the pyre for the sake of your loyalty !" Another gaia-berry-tasting word.
"Mordred." Merlin began solemnly. "I have lost more for the sake of my loyalty to Arthur than anyone can ever and will ever know. I have lost loved ones, my health and even my life a few times; and would risk it all again just for him. He is half of me, Mordred. Surely you know the prophecy..."
"It's different for you, you are bound to him - like a slave. I am not, I will not be loyal to one who has betrayed me." Mordred declared with twisted vigour.
"And you think I have not been betrayed by him!" Merlin cried, despair and disbelief mixing with the old pain buried within him, "He killed the women I loved. Slayed her like a beast because that was all he could see. His blindness cost her her life - I was going to run away with her, you know. Leave Arthur, Camelot and my destiny: for her. He took that from me, bound me too him - like a slave, as you say. Because once I had forgiven him that..." Merlin shook his head, his voice breaking, "I could forgive him anything. I could do anything in his name, even if it killed a part of me, persuade myself that everything was justified and any action worth the consequences for him. Because I forgave him and I am constantly forgiving him, and so many others, for things they do not even realise hurt me... I forgive him, Mordred. Even when that means I betrays myself. Even when he condemns and attacks all that I am, even when I have nothing left because of him..." The warlock sighed, for a brief moment lost in his memories; then he returned to the task at hand and summed it all up with a shrug: "You are not alone in having lost someone you love in this fight."
Silence fell as his painfully casual words lingered between the two men, drifting on the breeze like a feather.
"I didn't realise-" Mordred tried, staring at his hands.
"Why would you?" Merlin cut him off, curtly.
"You saved me." Mordred whispered and for once Merlin was reminded of the small druid boy he had chosen to save. "Back then. You thought I had forgotten?" Mordred looked up and met Merlin's suddenly awkward gaze. "I owe you, Merlin." He asserted; his assumed confidence betrayed by the tremors of his hands.
"No." The servant shook his head.
"If I owe you, you could order me to stay. To remain loyal..."
"Loyalty must be sel-"
"Selfless. I know, you said." Mordred answered, smiling briefly in spite of himself for the first time since Kara's execution.
"If you do not love your king out of your own heart, then that loyalty is false and easily broken." Merlin explained calmly, letting his magic seep into the nature all around him like did as often as he could. Mordred gasp quietly as he felt his own magic flex in response to the soft waves coming from the warlock. "You were loyal to him once, Mordred. Can you not be again?"
"I don't know Merlin..." he admitted quietly, still unsure if he wanted to be return to Arthur's side. He had come to Camelot being loyal to Merlin, to Emrys, then slowly that loyalty had transferred to the king - much as many of the Round Table knight had... "How can you do it? Forgive him, I mean; when he took so much from you."
"He didn't know." Merlin explained in a voice so raw Mordred wasn't sure if he should feel honoured or terrified for hearing it, "He never does, really - he is innocent of my pain. No, it's okay." The warlock held up his hand to halt Mordred's vocal indignation. "I prefer it that way. I shield him. That is my role, in a way. From so much, not just from threats: magical and not. But from the struggle, the strife and... everything else. I could not help him so many times, he had to face loss and betrayal alone. That hurt me more than any knife or arrow or blow in the name of protecting my king and my destiny. Do you see?"
"I see." Mordred answered resigned to Merlin's suffering, but still seething somewhat below the surface. Merlin was so alone; he had always had the knights while in Camelot, but now he could see Merlin couldn't rely on even them. He was in the inner circle, but never fully accepted. He straddled the threshold in so many ways: magical and not, servant and adviser, friend and foe, brother and stranger, fighter and clumsy idiot, jester and protector, a part of a whole and yet alone. "But he knew, he knew how I felt. I begged him and he still.... He knew I loved her, but it didn't matter." Mordred spoke finally, absorbing all that he now understood (or thought he did) about his - friend.
"It did, Mordred, believe me." Merlin begged, distraught hope underlying his every word until despair won out. "But there was nothing he could do... He did try, Mordred, but she would not change her mind - he offered her a chance, a choice, and she rejected it... Do not make the same mistake."
"If he could do that, why couldn't he spare her!" Mordred asked, rage swirling once again with this information - terrible lost hope returning in broken fragments.
"She broke the law - not bent like you and I do on occasion. Broke. She attacked all that Camelot should stand for and had to pay the price. For what it's worth," he added, a single tear rolling down his pale cheek, "I'm sorry."
"Should stand for?" Mordred asked softly, seeking the servant's gaze with his own.
"Well it doesn't always, does it?" Merlin retorted, fiercely returning the younger man's scrutiny - the power in them was unmistakable and Mordred gasped in spite of himself and the tears that lingered in those orbs. "And anyway, the prophecy is not complete. Magic has not yet returned to Camelot. But one day it will, Mordred. I believe that.
"But it already has, Merlin. It has come home."
"What do you mean?"
"You are here, Merlin. While you are at Camelot - while you are home - I will be loyal to the king. I will be loyal to Arthur, so long as magic remains at the heart of Camelot. So long as you remain here, Merlin"
"What makes you think I'm going anywhere?" Merlin joked, looking away at Mordred's silent apology in his eyes; as he quietly pointed out the servant's suffering.
"I could not do this without you." Mordred whispered.
There was silence in their small clearing, not even a bird or the wind could be heard, then Merlin asked:
"Do what?"
Mordred met his curious and impossibly hopeful stare, and replied with a tearful smile:
"Forgive him."