For @merthurmicrofic | Prompt: Exile | Word Count: 1174
Merlin never intended to keep the letters.
That, perhaps, was the strangest part of it.
He never intended to send them either.
The first was written three days after he left Camelot, in an inn so damp that the ink feathered across the page.
••●━━━━━━●••
Arthur,
You will be pleased to know that exile is every bit as miserable as you would have hoped, though I suspect you imagined it occurring at a much greater distance from your borders and with considerably fewer sheep, because I seem to be surrounded by them no matter where I go, their mournful complaints following me along roads that twist through hills so empty and grey that they look as though the world simply forgot to finish them, and if there is a lesson hidden somewhere in this landscape then I have not yet found it, unless the lesson is that loneliness grows louder when there is nothing else left to make noise.
I do not know why I am writing this.
You are not going to read it.
Even if you did, I suspect you would crumple it up before reaching the end.
Merlin
••●━━━━━━●••
The second letter was written two weeks later.
••●━━━━━━●••
Arthur,
Today I heard your name spoken by strangers.
They were merchants sheltering from rain beneath the awning of a blacksmith's workshop, and they spoke of you as men speak of mountains or storms, as something large enough to exist beyond argument, and I stood among them with my hood pulled low while they discussed your victories and your judgments and the future of your kingdom, and for a moment it was as though I had stepped outside my own life entirely and become merely another listener collecting stories about a king I once knew.
A king I once served.
A king who looked at me as though he had never known me at all.
I keep returning to that moment.
Not because I blame you.
Not entirely.
The truth is far more irritating than blame, because I understand why you looked at me that way.
You spent years believing that magic wore a certain face, spoke with a certain voice, carried a certain threat, and then suddenly you discovered it had been standing beside you all along carrying your packs and polishing your armour and complaining about your impossible habits, and what could you have felt except betrayal, because every memory must have shifted beneath your feet at once, every certainty turning strange.
I understand.
I simply wish understanding hurt less.
Merlin
••●━━━━━━●••
The third letter was never finished.
The page survived only because Merlin folded it away before the fire could reach it.
••●━━━━━━●••
Arthur,
I saved your life again today.
You do not know it.
You never will.
A group of mercenaries were moving south, carrying coin stamped with a foreign seal and discussing the reward that awaited them if they managed to put an arrow through the heart of Camelot's king before winter.
I followed them for three days.
They never reached your borders.
That sounds rather dramatic written down.
You would laugh at me.
Or accuse me of showing off.
I can hear you saying it now.
"Merlin, if you're going to save my life, do try not to be so smug about it."
And then I would point out that I was not being smug.
And then you would
••●━━━━━━●••
The sentence ended there.
Merlin could not remember how Arthur's voice sounded when he was laughing.
That frightened him more than he wanted to admit.
••●━━━━━━●••
Months passed.
Winter arrived.
The letters accumulated.
A stack of conversations with a man who never answered.
••●━━━━━━●••
Arthur,
There was snow this morning.
Snow that falls silently and covers everything so completely that the world appears untouched by human hands, and I found myself thinking of the morning after we returned from Ealdor when a storm trapped half the court indoors and you spent three hours attempting to convince everyone that you could ride through a blizzard without difficulty, only to fall off your horse before reaching the gate.
You swore every witness to secrecy.
Nobody listened.
You threatened executions.
Nobody listened to that either.
It occurs to me now that kings possess far less authority than they pretend.
I miss you.
There.
I have written it.
The words look ridiculous.
They look small.
They look incapable of carrying the weight of what they mean.
But there they are regardless.
I miss you.
Merlin
••●━━━━━━●••
The last letter came nearly a year after the first.
By then the edges of Camelot had become rumours on the horizon again, something glimpsed from distant roads, close enough to ache, too far away to touch.
••●━━━━━━●••
Arthur,
I think I finally understand what exile is.
It is not distance.
Distance is simple.
Distance can be measured.
A man may count the miles between himself and home, may mark them on maps, may cross them again if fortune allows.
Exile is something stranger.
It is carrying a place inside you that no longer has a place for you.
It is waking each morning with habits built for a life that has vanished.
It is seeing a badly saddled horse and immediately turning to make a sarcastic remark, only to discover there is nobody there to hear it.
It is knowing exactly where your loyalties lie and having nowhere to put them.
I used to think my destiny was a grand thing.
Dragons have a habit of making everything sound grand.
But perhaps destiny is merely endurance.
Perhaps it is remaining faithful to what you love even after it has cast you out.
You are still my king.
I do not know whether that matters anymore.
I do not know whether you would want it to.
But it is true.
And truth, unfortunately, has never cared much about what either of us wanted.
Merlin
••●━━━━━━●••
Years later, when the letters had yellowed and the folds had begun to crack, Merlin stood beside a lake beneath a sky the colour of old steel and watched a king rise from enchanted waters, and as astonishment and relief and grief crashed together inside him so violently that he could scarcely breathe, he found himself thinking not of destiny, nor prophecy, nor all the long centuries between then and now, but of a stack of unsent letters hidden away in a wooden chest, each one written to a man who had never answered.
Arthur looked at him.
Merlin looked back.
And for the first time in a very long while, exile ended.
The cold water was a visceral shock, dripping from Merlin's messy hair and pooling on the floor beneath his raised, aching arms. Chained to the ceiling of Morgana's grimy hovel, every breath felt like a slow painful rasp in his lungs.
Morgana’s touch came as a cold mockery of kindness as she then cleaned a jagged gash on his ribs.
"You know, there's one thing I don't understand, Merlin," she mused, "you're Arthur's servant, nothing more. Yet, time and again, you've proved yourself willing to lay down your life for him. Why are you so loyal to Arthur?"
"I don't expect you to understand, Morgana," Merlin countered, hiding the secret warlock behind a mask of defiance. "You have no sense of duty, no sense of loyalty."
"Don't think I don't understand loyalty just because I've got no one left to be loyal to. Not like I used to. And your devotion? like mine, it is utterly misplaced."
With a flick of her hand, a shimmering vision of Camelot’s high halls ignited the air. Merlin’s magic itched beneath his skin, telling him this was no illusion. It was a true glimpse of his home.
He saw Arthur, face drawn with a familiar, desperate conviction. He saw Gwen urging Arthur to abandon the search, her voice a low whisper "Arthur, please, think about what you are doing," she kept following him as they exited the castle and descended the steps, "Who knows if the mercenaries have even left the forest? The patrols found no sign of him."
"You see, Merlin?" Morgana hissed, her eyes showing a victorious glint that testified her belief of having won. He forced a mocking grin, even as the pain settled like a heavy weight in his chest. He had to lie. Had to pretend not to believe what he was shown. Just like the mundane, trusting Merlin would have. He shielded his true self behind a facade of disbelief while his feelings are silently hurt. Inside, he was relieved that Arthur would remain safe from this trap, yet a sharp ache radiated outward from the hollow space within him. The physical torture was nothing compared to this heartache: the quiet realization that to his oldest remaining friend, he had become replaceable, expendable. And for his safety he had to pray to be the same to the man he loved.
Later that day, even while his thoughts remain shrouded from the vessel his body had become, a spark ignited in his heart at seeing Arthur looking for him. That his King had not abandoned him.
---
Prompt: Pain | Words: 427 | Written for @merthurmicrofic
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