Merthur One-shots

All The Things We Did Not Become

Summary: “Was that your plan all along, Merlin?” He sneers, voice twisted into something cruel, “ally yourself with Morgause? Use my mother’s fate against me to push your own agenda?”

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Something about it feels like an ending. 

Maybe it’s the memory of the steady but harsh pace Arthur had set them on while they were riding back, or maybe it’s the finality that accompanies a secret - one that has cost thousands of people their lives - once it comes to light. Maybe it’s the seething hatred that’s rolling off of Arthur’s body in cascades as he holds the tip of his sword right above his father’s heart. 

Maybe it’s just Arthur: the way his body shakes with rage and grief and devastation; the way he looks like he’s about to collapse into another ruin of his father’s making - just like all those druidic camps and magic heavy sites of worship Uther once raided; maybe it’s the way he looks as he has never once looked before, in the two years Merlin has known him.

Or maybe it’s all of the above.

Twenty years of lies and genocide finally coming to a head - a son finally seeing his abusive and rotten father for the man he is. Maybe it’s the promise of a break in the cycle that Arthur’s been trapped in since his birth: what was once a seemingly endless pattern of deadly prejudices followed by deadly acts of vengeance finally coming to an end. 

If it was only that and nothing else, Merlin thinks he’d like endings very much. Except it’s never that simple, because of course it can’t be. Twenty years are not going to be erased with a revelation given in a day. Not for magic users, and not for Arthur.

And he knows what Arthur murdering his father will mean. He can almost see Arthur being crowned, looking regal and golden as king. He can almost smell the phantom, metallic tang of Uther’s blood if Arthur were to just press the sword against his chest a little harder, drive the tip in a little deeper. A vision of Camelot buzzing and glowing with magic is crystal clear in his head, and he almost loses himself in the wistfulness of it.

Except Merlin can also see, just as clearly, Arthur’s deterioration. The breaking and unmendable man that he will become every day after murdering his father, laid out right in front of Merlin’s eyes like a list of chores. He can see Arthur legalizing magic and yet still coming to hate it for all that it has cost him; coming to hate Merlin for all he is. He can almost hear the monotonous edge that Arthur’s voice will take, every single choice word of his on autopilot; dead and objective and not Arthur at all, just another cynical king. 

It’s too big of a price for the blood of one man (one man whose hands are covered with bloodstains belonging to thousands, a traitorous voice in him hisses). Because maybe Arthur will legalize magic regardless, his morality and conviction to do the right thing despite himself has always been clear (not to mention, he wouldn’t repeat Uther’s sins - since he actually does seem to learn from his lessons). But what would be the point? A king, repulsed by his own laws and people; detesting his own reign - there’s no victory in that.

Who would it help? Surely not magic users, who would not be given proper recompense or enough care for their laws. Certainly not the normal folk, who might suffer in the wake of a witch or warlock's vengeance, caught in the crossfire that the remiss laws did not account for. Surely not those so called worshipers of destiny - not when their precious golden age of Albion yields nothing more than a bleak, crumbling kingdom.