There is a curse upon the Pendragon line.
It is similar to gold sickness. The Pendragons have an obsession with possession, their land, their coin, their people. It was meant to cripple them, a curse cast and passed down, meant to terminate in a spiral into madness.
Uther, as his fathers before him, inadvertently figured out how to sate the desire. It was to displace that obsession, that ownership, that devotion, onto another. To find a suitable and singular person to be an outlet for the strength of such possessiveness.
Uther also discovered the power of the curse, in losing Ygraine, he was overcome by it. Overtaken was his rationality, replaced with a single minded hatred.
It was a fate that Arthur feared.
Uther believed that Arthur’s susceptibleness to the curse was his own failing. That it was something he could train out of the boy. He rotated the nursemaids, rotated his possessions, never let him know playmates or knights or nobles for too long. There was no way for Arthur to orient himself except his proximity to his father, his need for his approval.
Morgana was the first chink in his armor. They were kept separate, but she was more constant than any other member of Camelot that Arthur was allowed to interact with save Gaius. They trained together, had shared horse riding lessons, and ate meals in the hall with Uther, all of which had been new to Arthur. He knew her name, got to keep it in his mind in a way where most others flowed out of him, never being used for too long.
He would notice, only too late, her own susceptibility to the curse.
Leon was a dent to his breastplate. His first knight, his second in command, his relief if he fell injured in battle. His council was invaluable. Uther was his King, but when he took the crown, he would belong completely to Arthur.
The death knell of Arthur’s armor, the final cardinal direction by which he would orient himself, was Merlin.
It was small things at first, a lack of attention to detail, to propriety, to social hierarchy. Titles were irrelevant to the man. He would sneak food from him, jostle his armor, drop is sword, spill his bath water. All of it, but with a smile. A joviality Arthur had never been able to share proximity to for long. The warmth of a campfire on a winter patrol, shoddily constructed and poorly protected from the wind that Arthur realized never went out.
He assigned extra chores, he sent him to the stocks, he threw cups and pillows and inkpots, he dragged him to training, he used him for target practice. He did every single thing he could think of.
He was rude, he was mean. He was a clotpole and cabbage head and prat in all.
Oh he grumbled and complained and if pushed far enough could spit like a cat.
In the face of this overwhelming proximity, this unrelenting presence. Arthur relaxed.
He had scrunched up his face in the presence of the sun, but after a while, learned he only had to blink.
He wasn’t sure if Uther had slipped up or expected the boy to be in the dungeons a week or so in, but by whatever grace Merlin’s term in his employment was lengthened, Arthur was grateful. It was as though his long search in the dark, his restlessness for some unknown purpose had been completed, calmed.
The first of Arthur’s tipping points, was when Balinor died. He did not understand what effect the death of a Dragonlord would have on a Pendragon, but a piece of him shifted. Merlin carried something, some changed part of himself, and Arthur responded. Sought not just to entwine himself around his first and only friend, but allow himself to become a piece of Merlin as well.
The second tipping point was more of a series of poor decisions, a slow and steady slide down a hill, accumulating rocks and branches and dirt along his shins and loyal knights at his back. It was Lancelot and Gwaine and Elyan and Percival, all of them standing beside Leon. It was a regency, a testing of the waters, a tentative claim to his throne.
The third was Morgana. She tilted his axis, unbalanced his sense of direction, left him to wander through his self, examining his decisions and looking for the cracks. For the first ivory block that would fell the rest. He would never stop defining himself in relation to her, even as she put distance between them. She was the chink in his armor, irreparable.
Uther’s death was the beginning of the end. His azimuth erased, blotted out through dark magic spilled from an inkwell. It was the first real time Arthur had been lost since he met Merlin. And that was quickly corrected in the man’s presence. Starting with finding him outside the chamber where he grieved his father and ending with him at his side in all things.
Merlin’s magic was the end.
It was the shaking confession, the stuttered betrayal, the saving grace. It was the final reason for the last shred of distance that held between them. It was Merlin, standing in his chambers a month after his father’s death, rewriting the star charts of Arthur’s soul. A star falling in reverse, bending the heavens around its centrality. Arthur’s new azimuth. Polaris. Lover.
When he told Merlin, blood rushing in his ears, that whatever else he was, Sorcerer, Dragonlord, Emrys, he was first, Arthur’s.
Mine whispered some cursed voice through his very being, until his hand was around Merlin’s waist and fingers curled in his hair. Until is breath was in Merlin’s lungs and spit in his mouth. Until this burden of rule, this possession of land and coin and people was utterly spent, laid waste on the charred grasses of the battlefield in the wake of the heat of Merlin’s mouth on his own.
The answering echo, yours, was like a battle cry heard across a wide open field, growing louder until the swords clashed and the distance was closed. It was Merlin’s hand fisted in his tunic, Merlin’s leg pressed between his own, Merlin’s soft puffs of breath against his lips.
Arthur’s epilogue was Hunith.
Merlin had become his North, his star, his guide in the dark. Morgana remained his South, his contrast, his antithesis. Leon was his East, his sunrise, his beginning. Hunith was his West, his setting sun, his peace.
Merlin visited her more often after becoming his Court Sorcerer and Consort both. After his free and open use of magic, his relationship with the druids, his strengthening of Camelot meant that magic users put a moratorium on plots against the crown. The crowns. A tentative peace was growing, germinating through the relief of spring after a long and dark winter. It made travel more possible. Meant that King and Consort both could take a trip to a small, recently annexed, village without a battalion at their ready.
It meant cramped sleeping quarters and shared cots. Arms tucked over chests and breaths against necks. Soft promises traded in the dark. Bright mornings and simple tasks. Clucking chickens and mending fence posts and thatching roofs. Splashing laughter in summer streams and warm dinners held close to the hearth.
Arthur’s epilogue was Hunith’s gentle stories, recollections of ages long past told by fathers to sons. Curses placed on bloodlines for betrayals and retribution and vengeance. A drop of knowledge from the pool of history long forgotten, long laid to rest.
There was a tale of a Dragonlord, so powerful his hoard was coveted by friend and foe alike. A lover, overcome by greed, taking what would have been freely given. What would have been shared. Cursed to forever be unfulfilled. To never sate that need for power, for rule, for land, for coin, for people. Not until that which had been taken was returned. Until all that had been stolen or lost had been uncovered, rebuilt, provided. Restored.
Hunith’s gentle acceptance, her patience, her determination had been the last piece of settling Arthur into himself. Her understanding and kindness that shaped her son had sanded down the last of Arthur’s rough edges. Mended the last of Uther’s wounds. This small family, a constellation to which he belonged.
Magic returned to Albion and to the light of the setting sun, Arthur and Merlin returned home.
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